CHAPTER XXXV
FROM August to November the time had gone very slowly and very hardly for Joyce.
After that glowing afternoon, when she had heard from Norman Bellendean words which she could never forget, not another sign or token from him had reached her. It is not an unprecedented thing that a gap like this should happen in the midst of a love-tale. A declaration interrupted, a question unanswered, may expose any pair of lovers to such a blank. The man may be kept back by many reasons; the woman on her side cannot gather up the broken threads. Joyce, above all, had no initiative to take. He had said he would come back, but he had not come back; and thus the story of her awakened heart had seemed to close, as it began, in agitation and shame. It had been wrong to listen to him, wrong to allow the thought of him to enter into her heart. She had not intended it, she said to herself, as is always said. The strong new tide which she did not understand, the character of which she had begun to suspect too late, had carried her away. What defence could she have put up against it when she never suspected it,—when it was to her a surprise most painful, though so intoxicating? Who is there guilty of such infidelity, forsaking an old love for a new, who cannot excuse herself in such words? And of many such it is true, as with Joyce, that the first love had been a mere name, a something not understood, an acquiescence—no more. If she had sinned against Andrew in accepting the love which was true enough on his side, without any real response, it had been done without guile, with no knowledge of any harm. Joyce had been conscious that it was not the love of which her beloved poets had sung; but how could she tell? As there was no second Shakespeare, so perhaps that love of the poets had died away into something calm and poor, like the dull prose of to-day; and when the dulness about her had burst asunder like a husk, and flowers had come forth, and a blossoming and brightness indescribable, the girl, bewildered, had tried to attribute that illumination to other causes, to give it other names.
The revelation, when it came, lasted but for a moment. Before she had been able to realise the sunshine that suddenly blazed upon her life, there had as suddenly followed a blank. The bewilderment and confusion of all things, which had been great enough before, were by this brought to a climax. Norman’s declaration or half-declaration completed the cutting off of her heart and existence from every ancient tie. She dared not seek light in the chaos of her mind from any one near her. She dared not betray it to the tender ears of the old people who would not understand, to whom she could not say all. To whom could she say all?—to no one, no one on earth. She had to fall back upon herself, a creature straying about in worlds not realised. Andrew appeared to her through the mists like the vision of a nightmare, whose approach would be death. Never, even when no distraction was in her mind, when he was the most near and the most natural of all companions, had she been able to tolerate the idea of a closer union. She had vaguely looked for something to happen, to prevent any further rapprochement. She had surrounded herself with reasons why no further step should be taken. But she had never felt as now the horror of the bond which held her like iron—which she had escaped from, yet from which she never could escape. And, on the other hand, scarcely less terrible was the brighter vision which had burst upon her in one dazzling, bewildering blaze—the revelation which at first seemed to be that of Norman Bellendean’s love for her, but which soon settled into a shameful, terrible consciousness of her love for him. He had lighted up that blaze, and then he had disappeared out of her life, leaving her to contend alone with this discovery and consciousness. He had not asked for an answer from her—he had only asked to come back. And he had not come back; he had disappeared as if he had never existed, only leaving this revelation, this overturn of everything—the glory, the horror, the shame.
Joyce, it is true, had been absent for a great part of this blank period of darkness through which no word or sign of life had come. She had been taken away into new scenes, into a new world, the novelty and delight of which might have saved her had she ever remained long enough in one place to realise and understand it. But it was only to her of all her party that Switzerland was a novelty. Her father and his wife were accustomed to travel. They moved from one tourist centre to another carrying all their usual habits with them, possessing a terrible monotony of acquaintance with everything there was to do and to see. Mrs. Hayward took Mont Blanc as calmly as she did the river of which she felt her own lawn and trees to be one of the great charms. The Colonel thought more of the occasional old Indian comrade whom he would meet in one of the big noisy hotels, than of all the mysteries of the Alps.
Joyce had therefore little aid in healing her wounds herself, as she might have done, by that strong fascination of nature to which her spirit was so open. The mountains were not still to her, nor was there solitude to be found in the wildest ravine. She was taken there in the midst of a party which discussed their usual concerns, and were intent upon luncheon at the usual hour. The snowy peaks only formed a new background for the prattle of common life, for talk about St. Augustine and the new parsonage. The new world was to her like the old, only more bewildering—a phantasmagoria in which the great and the petty were jumbled together,—the great too cold and unfamiliar to reach her soul, the petty like a babbling torrent carrying her away. Oh for the crags of Arthur’s Seat and the sea coming in ayont them! Oh for the quiet where thought is possible! But then with a shiver poor Joyce felt that there was nothing for her but flight from the dear familiar scenes, and from the very stillness for which her heart craved. For the one was full of conflicting passions and the other of conflicting thoughts. Of all places in the world, that place which, with the obstinacy of the heart, she still called home was the most impossible to her. She dared not even turn her face in that direction, lest the subdued struggle within her might become a real conflict. For there was all that she dreaded as well as all that she loved.
And even when the travelling was over things did not mend. Summer was gone, and all its events. She came back to a blank, to the level of an existence no longer new to her, but which she had never learned to love. The sudden blaze of awakening, of enlightenment, of delight and misery, had ceased as suddenly as it rose. She never now heard Norman Bellendean’s name. He did not come, he gave no sign: he might be dead, or gone back to India, or in the farthest part of the earth, for anything she knew. He had disappeared as if he never had been, leaving in her heart and mind only the miserable consciousness that she loved him—oh, shame to think of! She so proud in her reserve and maidenly withdrawal! she, affianced to another man! she, Joyce, who had been so proud! She felt herself, she who had been a kind of princess in her own thoughts, reduced to the humble state of the Eastern handmaiden, waiting till perhaps some token of favour might be shown to her,—some word upon which she could build her hopes. It is rare that any shame, real and deserved, is felt with the same sting of suffering and self-horror as attends the altogether fantastic shame of a sensitive girl, when she finds that she has given her love unsought. It was torture and misery to Joyce. To allow to herself that she was disappointed—that her ear was always intent on every coming step, her heart ready to beat loudly for every sudden call, filled her with a bitterness of humiliation such as crime itself would scarcely bring. But nobody had any clue to these thoughts. Her father saw nothing but that his daughter became every day more delightful to him, more indispensable. Mrs. Hayward, with a faint disdain which it pleased her to be able to entertain for her husband’s daughter, concluded that Joyce, whom everybody thought so clever, was in reality dull. She had not shown any appreciation of Switzerland. She was a girl who might know books, perhaps, but nothing else. She had not cared for the mountains. It was impossible not to allow that Mrs. Hayward was rather satisfied on the whole that this should be. Perhaps only old Janet, with a sore and sad heart, felt that something was amiss. She did not know what it was that was wanting, but something was wanting. The letters which Peter found an inexhaustible source of happiness were to her dark. She could not see her child through them. ‘There is something the maitter,’ Janet said to herself. But nobody else divined, and to no one did Joyce breathe a word.
It was in this condition that she had begun the sunshiny, hazy, November day. It was Friday, the Friday of the winter Preachings, the Fast-day in Bellendean. She had remembered this when she set out with Colonel Hayward for their morning walk, with a tender thought of Janet in her great shawl, and Peter in his Sunday clothes, sitting in the kirk in rustic state and religious recueillement. And now the blank was broken, the silence disturbed, but not as she thought.
‘My dear, don’t you be afraid—I am here to protect you, Joyce; your father is surely good for that. This man can do nothing, nothing. Thank God that you don’t love him—that there is not that to struggle against.’
‘Father, it is quite true. Oh, I have behaved badly—I am not fit to be among honourable folk. I have not respected my word.’
‘Stuff and nonsense, my dear. What did a girl like you know? He took advantage of your ignorance. You could never have—cared for that fellow, Joyce.’ The Colonel himself blushed at the thought.
Joyce made no reply.
‘He took advantage of your inexperience—he never could have been a match for you. I remember—he was there that afternoon in the cottage. He tried to thrust his claims upon me, but Norman Bellendean took him off me. Ah, Norman Bellendean!’
The Colonel broke off quickly. He was not clear about it at all, but he remembered that Elizabeth—that there was something about Bellendean. He stopped confused; and, with a sudden start, Joyce raised herself from the sofa. He had brought her to life, though he did not know it, by that violent stimulant. ‘I must not,’ she said, in a broken voice, ‘go back from my word.’
‘I set you free from it,’ said the Colonel. ‘You were under age. You had no right to bind yourself. I set you free from it.’
She shook her head at him with a wistful smile. ‘It was once thought a priest could do that,’ she said.
‘I am not a priest, but I am your father, Joyce. I set you free from it. It is in the Bible—you know your Bible better than I do. I set you free from it. You had no right to bind yourself.’
She shook her head still. ‘I cannot get any comfort out of that. I was a woman, well knowing what I was doing.’
‘My dear, you are not of age even now.’
‘Oh, father,’ she cried, ‘don’t say anything to me. I cannot go back from my word.’
‘Joyce, I hear my wife coming back. I am not clever, I know. Elizabeth is the one to tell us what to do. If she will only take it up—if you will let her take it up.’
Joyce rose quickly to her feet. ‘Not now—not now. I couldn’t speak to any one. Father, you must let me settle it by myself.’
‘Joyce! Oh, have confidence in us both, Joyce!’
Joyce escaped from his restraining hand and imploring look. She hastened out of one door while Mrs. Hayward entered by the other, and, with her limbs trembling under her, got to the refuge of her own room, where at least there was no one to question her, and tell her what she ought to do. She was not capable of any more. She threw herself down in a chair, and did not move for hours, turning it over and over—helplessly over and over in her mind. It was all she could do. The scene through which she had just passed repeated itself before her—every word that had been said, every look. When she was called to go downstairs for lunch, she made excuses for herself she knew not what, and sat there with a sort of helpless craving only to be alone—to be left to herself—through all the daylight hours. It seemed to Joyce that everything else had disappeared for ever, that every vision of her soul was gone,—that Andrew alone stood before her, the only stable and steadfast thing. She saw him before her eyes all the time, with all his imperfections. There had never been any glamour in her eyes to blind her to these. His familiar aspect, with which she had grown unfamiliar, came back to her with all the force at once of recollection and of new discovery. He had come to claim her, and he had a right to claim her; and how could she resist that claim? He had not hesitated, nor had he been cowed even by her dread of him, by her father’s vehemence. He had stood for his rights like a man. A respect for the man at whom she shuddered, whose approach was dreadful to her, had come into Joyce’s mind: even with strange inconsistency she was half proud of him in his immovableness—in the resolution and force he had shown. She tried to face it all calmly, to contemplate her fate,—to ask herself whether, perhaps, her old life, the duties to which she had been born, were not after all the best, the only existence for her? There would be plenty to do, there would not be much time to think. The clamour of the school, and all the old emulations, and the ambitions which at once seemed enough to fill any mind, would shut out all echoes and banish all ghosts. Only for a few months had she been absent—not enough to change her habits, to change the fashion of her mind. Why should she resist and strive against her fate?
She tried to soothe and put away other visions by that—the school, the children’s looks of interest, the clinging of the girls about her, the books in which she could always escape from all that troubled her. With her trembling hands clasped, with her eyes in an abstract gaze, she saw all these things again, and for a moment her heart beat calm. But then once more, with a sudden flash, with a start, with a cry of horror, she recognised in front of all, him—Andrew—as he had stood before her to-day, as she remembered him, as he was and had always been. Joyce sprang to her feet to escape that steady, calm, immovable image. She put her hands over her hot eyes, but could not shut it out. She paced about her room, but could not get beyond the place in which he stood. He filled all the sphere of her vision, as he would fill her whole life. Oh, how to escape—how to escape! Oh for the wings of a dove!—but where to fly? She flung herself down on her knees by the side of her bed. Sometimes in that attitude merely there is a relief. She was not praying, but laying her heart with all its confusions, its whirl of contradictory thoughts, its wild longings for escape, open where God could see it, calling wistfully His attention to it as human creatures will, in human forgetfulness that everywhere and in all attitudes He sees, and does not neglect.
Later in the afternoon Joyce stole out to seek counsel from the evening breeze and the cold flow of the river. She was afraid to go beyond the limits of the garden and grounds lest she should meet him alone, and forestall the decision of her fate. The November evening was chill with cold dews falling, the grass penetrated with wet, the half-naked trees all heavy with moisture, sprinkling cold showers over her when the breeze moved them. She went down to the river-edge, and looked out upon it in the grey of the twilight, flowing, glistening, giving back the little light there was. A boat was drawn up here and there on the bank, but there was none on the stream, which, swollen with early rains, and bearing on its dark clear surface specks of the leaves that every air swept off the overhanging trees, flowed on through the darkness, a ceaseless wayfarer. The willows, still in ragged robes of pale yellow, gave a faint light to the darkling scene. Joyce leant over, almost feeling the sweep of the stream, and there came upon her a strong temptation to detach the boat that lay within her reach, and trust herself to the flowing water and the night. The possibilities of that flight came before her instantaneously like a picture. The stream itself would carry her along; the movement itself would soothe her troubled spirit. She seemed to feel the rush of the water under the bridge, to see the lights of the town twinkling reflected on the water, the opening of the dim evening skies beyond, the dark shadows of barges and ships as the widening stream flowed on. She saw in a moment all the dark panorama float past her, the increasing rush of the Thames, the sound of its gurgle in her ears, the growing dangers of the darkness, and the crowded ways. The little boat might go down under the bows of some monster in the dark, and no one ever know what young despairing heart was in it. She saw, too, the dark mass heaving up high above, the frail little vessel turning over, the choking inky stream, and drew back with a low cry of terror. It was indeed a kind of despair which was closing round her, but she wanted to escape and not to die—not yet to die.
The shuddering of that sensation brought her back slowly away from the dark fascination of the flowing water. She came back picking her steps across the wet grass, chilled by the damp and the dark, the cold raindrops suspended on the branches coming down upon her in an icy shower as she passed under the trees. The lights in the windows, the warmth of the house, shone through the twilight, attracting her, putting forth a strong appeal. But what was warmth and shelter to freedom, if she could but get her freedom and escape from it all? Joyce had got beyond all power of thinking. Her mind saw pictures, visions of what might be, as more reasonable people see the motives and arguments which tell for or against every course of action. As she turned her face from the river and reached the gravel path, there suddenly came before her a vision of a still and quiet country road, such as she had seen in her walks, leading far away into far level distances, the long perspective of the low-lying country. She bethought herself of a dozen turns and byways, all leading into the unknown. She saw them stretching for miles and miles, leading the wayfarer far out of sight of every one who knew her, and the dark line of the hedgerows that would keep her from straying, and the sleeping villages she would pass through. There would be no dangers in a country road, and she was strong: she could go a long way without requiring to pause. There would be ten hours of darkness in which she could walk on. She was not afraid of her strength failing. And at the end surely there would be some quiet place where nobody would ever think of finding a strayed creature. It would be like falling and disappearing through Mirza’s bridge. Joyce stood still for a moment, moved by a wild prick of that unreasoning impulse which was in her blood. By the side of the house was a dim opening which admitted to that world, strange, dark, and cold, in which a poor girl could lose herself who had no true place, no natural nest in the other. She paused for a moment, clasping her hands, appealing to she knew not what—not God this time: there are moments when the bewildered soul becomes pagan in its broken faith—to something, she knew not what, above, around.
The lamp had been lighted in the drawing-room, but no curtains drawn or shutters closed. Another picture, a real one, caught her eyes there as she hesitated, standing on the edge. She was close to the verandah upon which the window opened, and she heard the sound of the voices within, now raised, now sinking low. The sudden spell of a stronger interest seized upon Joyce. She came forward a few steps at a time, unwilling and yet eager, until she commanded a full view of the party within. Her father stood facing the window. He was talking with much vehemence, referring occasionally to his wife, who sat in her usual place, a very watchful spectator—now and then breaking off with a flourish of his hand, as a man does when he has said something unanswerable. With his back towards the window, Andrew sat squarely on a chair, his hat at his feet. There came upon Joyce an impulse of painful laughter in the midst of her misery. It was a look, an attitude she knew so well—ludicrously, horribly familiar in this crisis of her fate,—for it was her fate, her life or death, they were deciding, while he sat there like a rock, unconvincible, immovable, as he had sat through many a discussion that mattered nothing. For who could ever convince Andrew? She drew closer in the sudden smart of the recollection, the keen sense of incongruity, the reality of this scene dispersing every vision. The living drama, in which she was herself the chief figure, had a stronger force than any imagination. She went into the verandah, to the window against which, on the other side, she had leant in the morning. It was not fastened, and yielded to her touch. They all turned upon her at the sound of the faint cry she gave.