CHAPTER XXX
‘YOU must try and get her to tell you when you are out this morning,’ said Mrs. Hayward. ‘She is probably silent on account of me; but you are her father, and you ought to know.’
‘My dear,’ said the Colonel, ‘why should she be silent on account of you?’
‘Oh, we need not enter into that question, Henry. Get her to tell you; it will be a relief to her own mind when she has got it out.’
‘Perhaps, Elizabeth, after all, we are going too fast. Bellendean has always been very friendly. He came to see me, and sought me out as his old colonel, before there was any Joyce.’
‘So you think it’s for you!’ Mrs. Hayward cried. And then she added severely, ‘If we should be going too fast, and there has been no explanation, Henry, you must bring him to book.’
‘Bring him to book? I don’t know what you mean, Elizabeth,’ said the Colonel, with a troubled countenance.
‘You must not allow it to go on—you must put a stop to it—you must let him know that you can’t have your daughter trifled with. You must ask him his intentions, Henry.’
The Colonel’s countenance fell: he grew pale, and horror filled his eyes. ‘Ask him—his intentions! his intentions! Good Lord! I might shoot him if you like; but ask him—his intentions towards my daughter, Elizabeth! Good Lord!’ The Colonel grew red all over, and panted for want of breath. ‘You don’t know what you say.’
‘I—don’t know what I say? As good men as you have had to do it, Henry. You must not let a man come here and trifle with Joyce. Joyce must not be——’
‘I wish you would not bring in her name,’ cried the old soldier—‘a young woman’s name! I know what you say is for—for our good, Elizabeth; but I can’t, indeed I can’t—it’s not possible. I ask a man—as if I meant to force him into—— My dear, you can’t know what that means; you can’t say what you’re thinking. I to put shame upon my own child!’ The Colonel walked up and down the room in the greatest perturbation. ‘I can’t—I can’t!’ he said; ‘you must never think of such a thing again. I—Elizabeth! Good Lord——!’ He stopped. ‘My dear, I beg your pardon. I don’t mean to be profane—but to tell me—oh, good Lord!’ the Colonel cried, feeling that no words were adequate to express the horror and incongruity of the suggestion.
Mrs. Hayward had stood watching him without any relaxation of her look. There was a certain vulgar fibre in her which was not moved by that incongruity. A faint disdain of his incapacity, and still more of his delicacy about his daughter’s name, as if she were of more importance than any one else, was visible in her face. Who was Joyce that she was not to be warned, that her lover was not to be brought to book? Mrs. Hayward, in that perpetual secret antagonism which was in her mind, though she disapproved of it and suffered from it, was more vulgar than her nature. She was ready to scoff at these prejudices about Joyce, though in her natural mind she would have herself shielded a young woman’s name from every breath.
‘I am speaking in Joyce’s interests,’ she said. ‘I hope you don’t want to break her heart.’
‘Elizabeth, Elizabeth!’ said the Colonel, ‘I beseech you, don’t talk like that. Why, you can’t know, you can’t, you don’t realise what a girl is to a man, especially when he is her father. It’s bad enough to think of her caring for one of those fellows at all; but to break her heart—good Lord!—and for me to interfere, to call up a man to—to the scratch—to—— Oh, good Lord, good Lord!’ cried Colonel Hayward, with a blush like a girl. ‘I might shoot him and take the penalty, but you might as well ask me to—to shoot myself at once—as to do that: or to acknowledge that my child, that young creature, my Joyce——’
‘You can’t expect me to follow you in your raptures, Henry,’ said his wife, sitting down at the breakfast-table, for this discussion had been held in the morning, before Joyce appeared: and at that moment the door opened and she came in, putting a stop to the conversation. She was paler than usual, and graver; but the two were confused by her entrance, and for the moment so much taken up in concealing their own embarrassment, that they did not remark her looks. Joyce was very quiet, but she was not unhappy. How could she be with the thrill of Norman Bellendean’s voice still in her ears, and his last look, which meant so much, so clear before her? She was wrong, she was guilty; it might be that misery and shame should be her portion. She knew that she had failed to honour, if not to love, and that her way before her was very dark; but do what she would, Joyce could not force herself to be unhappy now. The first thing that had occurred to her when she opened her eyes upon the morning light was not any breach of faith or failure in duty, but that voice and those eyes with their revelation which made her heart bound out of all the shadows of the night. She was pale with all this agitation, uneasy even when she slept, distracted by spectres; but in the morning light she could not be wretched, however she tried. She was very quiet, however, much more so than usual; and the absence of that eager vitality which kept continual light and shadow on her sensitive face gave her a certain dignity, which was again enhanced by her complete unconsciousness of it. Her father cast a glance at her in this composed stateliness of aspect, and had to hasten away to the sideboard and cut at the ham to hide the horrified shame of his countenance. A creature like that to break her heart for any fellow! to be called upon to ask any man his intentions—his intentions—in respect to her! The Colonel hewed down the ham till his wife had to remonstrate. ‘You are not cutting for a dozen people, Henry.’ ‘Oh, I beg your pardon my dear,’ he cried, and came back to his seat very shamefaced with a small solitary slice upon his plate.
When the Colonel went out for his usual walk, with Joyce as his companion, Mrs. Hayward came after them to the door, and laid her hand significantly on her husband’s shoulder. ‘Now don’t forget,’ she said. Forget! as if he were likely to forget what weighed upon him like a mountain. He thought to himself that he would put off any allusion till the walk was half over; but the Colonel had not the skill nor the self-control to do this, the uneasy importance of his looks betraying something of his commission even to the dreamy eyes of Joyce. Had she been fully awake and aroused, she must have seen through all his innocent devices at the first glance.
‘It was rather a pleasant party, yesterday,’ he said, ‘especially afterwards, when we were by ourselves.’ The Colonel meant no bull, but had lost himself in a confusion of words.
‘Yes,’ said Joyce very sedately, without even a smile.
‘By the way,’ said the Colonel briskly, seizing the first means of avoiding for a little longer the evil moment, ‘you did great execution, Joyce. I don’t know what you said to the Canon, my dear, but I think you accomplished in a minute what all the good people have been trying to do for weeks and weeks. What did you say?’
What did she say? She gave her father a wondering look. Who was the Canon, it seemed to ask, and when was yesterday? It looked a century ago.
‘That is what I like to see a woman do,’ cried the Colonel, rousing himself into enthusiasm for the sake of gaining a little time—‘not making any show, but with a word of hers showing what’s kind and right, and getting people to do it. That’s what I like to see. You have done your friends the best turn they ever had done them in their life.’
‘Was it so?’ said Joyce, with a faint smile. ‘I am very glad; but it was the Canon that was good to pay attention to the like of me.’
‘The like of you!’ cried the Colonel. ‘I don’t know the man that wouldn’t pay attention to the like of you.’ Then he got suddenly grave, being thus brought back headlong to the very subject which he had been trying to escape. ‘Oh, I was going to say,’ he added, with a look that was almost solemn— ‘I am afraid we shall miss him very much—I mean Norman Bellendean.’
‘Yes,’ said Joyce. He spoke slowly, and she had time to steady her voice.
‘Perhaps you knew before that he was going, my dear?’
‘No,’ she replied, feeling all the significance of these monosyllables, yet incapable of more.
‘I thought he had perhaps told you—at least Elizabeth—Elizabeth thought he might have told you.’
‘Why should he have told me?’ said Joyce, with an awakening of surprise.
The Colonel was full of confusion. He did not know what to say. He felt guilty and miserable, like a spy, and yet he was faithful to his consigne, and to the task that had been set him to do. ‘Indeed,’ he said, in his troubled voice, ‘my dear, I don’t know; but it was thought—I mean I thought, perhaps, that it would be a comfort to you—if you could have a little confidence in me.’
Joyce began to perceive dimly what he meant, and it brought a flush to her pale face. ‘But I have confidence—a great confidence,’ she said, very low, not looking at him. The Colonel took courage from these words.
‘Your father, you know, Joyce,—that is very proud of you, and to have such a daughter—and that would let no one vex you, not for a moment, my dear—not by a word or a thought—and that would like you to make a friend of him, and tell him—whatever you might like to tell him,’ he added, hastily breaking off in the middle of what he had meant to be a long speech, and giving double force to so much as he had said by these means.
Joyce had gradually aroused herself out of her dreams to understand the meaning in her father’s voice, which trembled and quickened, and then broke with a fulness of tender feeling which penetrated all the mists that were about her. There suddenly came to her a sense of help at hand—a belief in the being nearest to her in the world—a sort of viceroy of God more true than any pope—her father. What no one else could do he might do for her. It would be his place to do it; and it would be her right to appeal to him, to put her troubles into his hands. She had never realised this before: her father—who would let no one vex her, who would stand between her and harm, who would have a right to answer for her, and take upon himself her defence. The tears rushed to her eyes, and a sense of relief and lightening to her heart.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I will mind that. I will never forget it: my father, that is like God, to know the meaning in my heart, even if I am far wrong: and not to be hard on me, but to see where I was deceived, and to take my cause in hand.’
‘Deceived!’ the Colonel faltered, with mingled consternation and wrath. ‘Show me the man that would deceive you, my dear child, and leave him to me—leave him to me.’
‘What man? There is no man,’ said Joyce, shaking her head. ‘Oh, if it was but that! but when it is me that has been the deceiver—and yet meant no harm!’
Her eyes swimming in tears that made them larger and softer than ever eyes were, the Colonel thought, turned to him with a tender look of trust which went to his heart, and yet was less comprehensible to him than all that had gone before. He was puzzled beyond expression, and touched, and exalted, and dismayed. He had gained that confidence which he had sought, and yet he knew less than ever what it meant. And she had said he was like God, which confused and troubled the good man, and was very different from the mission that had been given him to find out his child’s secret, and to bring to book—what horrible words were these!—to bring to book! But whatever Joyce had on her mind, at least it was not Norman Bellendean.
And here in the emotion of the moment, and the rising of other and profounder emotions, the Colonel dropped his consigne, and gave up his investigations. He did not in the least understand what Joyce meant; but she had given him her confidence, and he was touched to the bottom of his tender heart. She had said that he would take her cause in hand, that he was her father like God—a new and curiously impressive view, turning all usual metaphors round about—that he would know her meaning, even if she were far wrong. Not a word of this did the Colonel comprehend—that is, the matter which called forth these expressions remained entirely dark to him; but it would have been profane, he felt, to ask for further enlightenment after she had thus thrown herself upon him for protection and help. He was glad to relieve the tension by having recourse to common subjects, so that without any further strain upon her, his delightful, tender, incomprehensible child might get rid of the tears in her eyes, and calm down.
The result was that the Colonel talked more than usual on that morning walk, and told Joyce more stories than usual of his old Indian comrades, and of things that had passed in his youth, going back thirty, forty years with at first a kind conscious effort to set her at her ease again, but after a while with his usual enjoyment in the lively recollection of these bright days which the old soldier loved to recall. And Joyce walked by his side in an atmosphere of her own, full of the bewitchment of a new enchanting presence suddenly revealed to her, full of the mystic, half-veiled consciousness of Love—love that was real love, the love of the poets, not anything she had ever known before. Her father’s voice seemed to keep the shadow away, the thought of the wrong she had done and the troth she had broken, but did not interfere with that new revelation, the light and joy with which the world was radiant, the inconceivable new thing which had looked at her out of Norman Bellendean’s eyes. She walked along as if she had been buoyed up by air, her heart filled with a great elation which was indescribable, which was not caused by anything, which looked forward to nothing, which was more than happiness, a nameless, causeless delight.
If she had been in a condition to examine what Captain Bellendean had said, or in any way to question what Mrs. Hayward called his intentions, Joyce’s feelings might have been very different. But of this she took no thought whatever, nor asked herself any question. What she did ask, with a triumphant yet trembling certainty, was whether this was not the Vita Nuova of which she had read? The answer came in the same breath with that question. She knew it was the Vita Nuova—the same which had made the streets of Florence an enchanted land such as never was by sea or shore, and turned the woods of Arden into Paradise. The pride and glory and delight of having come into that company of lovers, and received her inheritance, softly turned her dreaming brain. She had never been so much herself—for all those references to other people and pervading circumstances which shape a young woman’s dutiful existence had disappeared altogether from her consciousness—and yet she was not herself at all, but a dream. The accompaniment of her kind father’s pleasant voice, running on with his old stories, gave her a delightful shelter and cover for the voiceless song which was going on in her own heart. She had put her cause into his hands, as she felt, though she was not clear how it had been done. He would not blame her, though she was wrong. He would defend her. And thus Joyce escaped from life with all its burdens and penalties, and floated away upon the soft delicious air into the Vita Nuova. Never was such a walk—her feet did not touch the ground, her consciousness was not touched by any vulgar sound or sight. Soft monosyllables of assent dropped from her dreaming lips as the delighted historian by her side went on with the records of his youth. He felt that he had all her interest—he felt how sweet it was to have a dear child, a girl such as he had always wished for, who had given him her full confidence, and who cared for everything that ever had happened to him, and was absorbed in it as if the story had been her own. In all their goings and comings together, there had never been a walk like this.