CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE storm subsided which had raged around Joyce for that long and miserable day. When a few others had passed in their usual calm, the Colonel, who had elaborately refrained from all allusion to what had occurred, saying even from time to time, ‘We must not speak of that,’ made up his mind with great satisfaction that Joyce had dismissed it from her mind. ‘She is so full of sense,’ he said to his wife; ‘she doesn’t go fretting and worrying about a thing as I do. When she knows that there is nothing to be done, she just puts it aside. I wish we were all as sensible as Joyce.’
‘Then take care you don’t remind her of it,’ said Mrs. Hayward.
‘I—remind her! Why, I have said from the first— We’ll say nothing of that. Time will settle it. I have said it every day. And you think I would remind her!’
‘Well, Henry, I would not say even that if I were you. I have given Baker his orders never to let that man in again. I hate to take servants into my confidence, but still—— Fortunately nobody has seen him or knows anything about him,’ said the deceived woman, with mistaken calm. She was not so sure about Joyce’s good sense as her husband was; but even in the midst of her annoyance a certain compassion for Joyce had awakened in her mind. Poor thing! to feel herself bound to such a man. ‘And we are not done with him,’ Mrs. Hayward said to herself. She sighed for the calm of those days when there were no complications—when it was quite unnecessary to give Baker any instructions as to who should be admitted—when a disturbance and angry controversy in her pretty drawing-room would have been a thing inconceivable. She thought she could decipher a trace of Andrew’s country boots on the Persian rug, a delightful specimen upon which (she had remarked at the time) he had placed his chair. The Colonel in his anger had crushed up between his hands a piece of fine embroidery, and ravelled out some of the gold thread which formed the exquisite pattern. In spite of these things Mrs. Hayward, for the first time, was sorry for Joyce. She felt with an impatient vexation that if Captain Bellendean had but ‘spoken’ when she thought he did, all this might have been avoided. There would no doubt still have been a struggle. The schoolmaster would not have given in without a fight; but Mrs. Hayward knew human nature well enough to be sure that with a man behind her whom she loved, Joyce would have felt her bond to the man whom she did not love to be still more impossible. In such a case fidelity was no longer a virtue but a crime.
But Bellendean had gone, and had not spoken. Mrs. Hayward had been both angry and disappointed by this failure. She had blamed Joyce for it, and she had blamed the Colonel for it. That a man should afficher himself and then go away was a thing not to be endured, according to her ideas. And now she was really sorry for Joyce, in both these aspects of her case. If Joyce had but known how much her stepmother divined, all her troubles would have been increased tenfold. But fortunately she did not know, although the additional kindness of Mrs. Hayward’s manner gave her now and then a thrill of fear.
She was walking with her father in the park one morning, not long after these events. Winter was coming on with great strides, and the leaves fell in showers before every breath of wind. Some of the trees were already bare. Some stood up all golden yellow against the background of bare boughs, lighting up the landscape. The grass was all particoloured with the sprinklings of the fallen leaves. Under the hill the river flowed down the valley, coming out of distances unseen. The Colonel and his daughter paused at a favourite point of theirs to look at the prospect. The wide vault of firmament above and the great breadth of air and space beyond were always a refreshment and consolation. ‘O Thames! flow softly while I sing my song,’ Joyce said, under her breath.
‘Eh?—what were you saying, Joyce?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, with a smile; ‘only a line out of a poem.’
‘Ah! you know so much more about books, my dear, than I have ever done. You must get that turn in your education early, or you never take it of yourself. I have never asked you, Joyce, though it has often been on the tip of my tongue. How do you like the place, now you know it? I hope you like your home.’
‘It is very—bonnie. I use that word,’ said Joyce, ‘because it means the most. Pretty would be impertinent to the Thames—and beautiful——’
‘Do you think beautiful’s too much? Well, my dear, tastes differ; but I never saw anything that pleased me like the course of the river and the splendid trees. You should have lived in a hot climate to appreciate fully English trees.’
‘Oh, but I do,’ cried Joyce. ‘They are finer than we have—in Scotland,’ she said, after a pause. It had been on her lips to say ‘at home.’
‘Much finer,’ said the Colonel, with conviction; ‘but that is not exactly an answer to my question. I asked if you liked it—as your home.’
Joyce raised her eyes to him, moist and shining. ‘Father,’ she said, ‘it is you who are my home.’
‘My love!’ the Colonel stammered and faltered, in unexpected emotion. The water came to his eyes and blotted out the landscape. ‘You make me very happy and very proud, Joyce. This is more, much more than I had any right to.’ He took her hand in his and drew it within his arm. ‘I have wanted,’ he said, ‘to surround you with everything that your poor mother did not have—to make you happy if I could, my dear: but I scarcely expected such a return as this. God bless you, Joyce! Still,’ said the pertinacious inquirer, caressing the hand upon his arm, ‘that’s not quite what I asked, my dear.’
Joyce had twice avoided the direct response he demanded. She paused before she replied. ‘Some,’ she said, ‘father, are happy enough never to need to think, or ask such a question. I wish I had been always where you were, and never to have had any life but yours; or else——’ Colonel Hayward fortunately did not remark these two syllables, which were softly said, and breathed off into a sigh.
‘My dear,’ he said, ‘under the best of circumstances that could never have been, for you know the most of my life has been spent in India. The worst of India is, that parents must part with their children. We should not really have known very much more of each other if—if you had been born, as you should have been, in your father’s house.’
‘Then there is little harm done,’ said Joyce, this time with a smile.
‘Not if you trust us fully, my dear, and love your home.’ He patted her hand again, then moved on unsatisfied. ‘I think, however, you are beginning to like the people, and feel at home among them. And they like you. I am sure they like you—and admire you, Joyce, and feel that you are—— There is Lady St. Clair, my dear, with all her bevy of girls. You will want to stop and speak to them. My wife says they’re the best people, but I’m not myself very fond—— How do you do?’ cried the Colonel cheerily, taking off his hat with a flourish. ‘Lovely morning! How do you do?’
The old soldier stood the image of good-humour and cheerful courtesy, holding his hat in his hand. There were so many ladies to share his bow that it was longer than usual, and gave the wind time to blow about a little the close curly locks, touched with gray, which covered the Colonel’s head with all the vigour of youth. His countenance beamed with kindness and that civility of the heart which made the fact that he was not himself very fond of this group inoperative. But when Lady St. Clair, picking her steps to the other side of the road, delivered in return the most chilling of faint bows, while her daughters hurried like a flock of birds across the park to avoid the encounter, Colonel Hayward stood dumb with consternation in the middle of the path. His under lip dropped in his astonishment, he forgot to put on his hat. He turned to Joyce, holding it in his hand, with dismay in his face. ‘What—what,’ he cried, ‘is the meaning of that?’
‘Indeed I don’t know,’ said Joyce. She was not aroused to the importance of the action. Unfortunately she did not care, nor did it seem to her that so slight a matter was worth noticing. ‘They were perhaps in a hurry,’ she said.
‘In a hurry! They meant to avoid us. They would rather not have seen us. What does it mean, Joyce? They consulted together, and the girls rushed off, and their mother—I am utterly astounded, Joyce.’
‘But,’ said Joyce, very calmly, ‘if they did not wish to speak to us, why should they? I do not think I care.’
The Colonel put on his hat. He had grown a little pale. ‘Elizabeth will not like it,’ he said. ‘She will not like it at all. For a long time she would not go into society, because of—— But now that she does she likes to know all the best people. I am not myself fond of those St. Clairs. But any unpleasantness, I am sure, would make her unhappy. Can I have done anything, I wonder? I am a blundering old fellow,—I may have neglected some etiquette——’
‘Perhaps it would be better to say nothing about it,’ said Joyce.
‘Much better!’ cried the Colonel. ‘That’s the right way—take no notice. I am glad you are of that opinion. But I’m very bad at keeping a secret, Joyce. Probably I’ll blurt it out.’
‘No, father. I will look at you when I see you approaching the subject,’ said Joyce. She was quite unconscious of any seriousness in the matter. Lady St. Clair and her girls seemed incapable of any influence on her fate. She even laughed, looking up at him with a lightness quite unusual to her. ‘It will be a little secret between us,’ she said.
‘So it will,’ said the Colonel, brightening; ‘but you must keep your eyes upon me, Joyce. I never could keep a thing to myself in my life, particularly from Elizabeth. But this cannot be of any importance after all, can it? No, I don’t think it can be of any importance. Lady St. Clair may be vexed with me perhaps for the moment. I may have done some silly thing or other. I would not for the world have a secret from Elizabeth—but such a trifle as this.’
‘It cannot be of the least importance,’ said Joyce. She was more confident of being right than he had ever known her before.
‘Well, my dear: but you must keep your eyes upon me,’ Colonel Hayward said.
He came back to the subject several times as they went on, and worked out the shock, so that by the time they reached home, he himself had come to regard Lady St. Clair’s incivility as a matter of little importance. ‘Perhaps she had something on her mind, my dear; their eldest boy, I believe, gives them a great deal of trouble. And I know they are not rich—and with that large family. People are not always in the mood for a conversation on the roadside. You are quite right, Joyce. I daresay it meant just nothing at all but the humour of the moment. It will be a little secret between you and me—but you must keep your eyes upon me. Give a little cough, or put your hand up to your brooch, or some sign I shall know—for I am an old goose, I know it: I can keep nothing to myself.’
When they reached home, however, the incident and the secret were both forgotten in the surprise which awaited them. They found Mrs. Hayward in the drawing-room entertaining Mrs. Bellendean. Joyce, though she had always been more shy of her dear lady since she had discovered how much Mrs. Bellendean’s behaviour to herself was influenced by her change of circumstances, was startled out of all her preventions by this unexpected visit. But the sight of the woman to whom she had looked up with such sincere reverence, and admired before everybody in the world, was not now to her so simple a matter as it had once been: after the first burst of pleasure it was impossible to forget how closely associated she was both with the old life and the new. And Mrs. Bellendean herself was changed. There were lines of anxiety and care in her face. She was no longer the calm queen in her own circle, the centre of pleasure and promotion she had once appeared to Joyce. The peace of the old life was gone from her, and something of its largeness and dignity. She talked of her present plans and purposes in such a way that Joyce, though little accustomed to the subtleties of conventional life, slowly came to perceive that the object of Mrs. Bellendean’s visit was not that which it professed to be. She explained to them that she was about to leave England with her husband for Italy, and that she had come to take leave of her friends—but this was not all. Joyce’s training in the net-work of motives which lie under the surface was very imperfect. She wondered, without at all divining, what the other object was.
‘Things have changed very much since Bellendean ceased to be our headquarters,’ she said with a smile which was not a very cheerful one. ‘You remember how much I threw myself into it, Joyce. After having nothing particular to do, to come into that full life with so many things to look after was delightful to me. But my husband never liked it,’ she added quickly. ‘He dislikes the worry and the responsibility. He thinks it worry: you know I never did.’
‘My friend Norman,’ said the Colonel, ‘will be lost without you. It must have been such a thing for him.’
‘Oh, Norman has been very good.’ Lines came out on Mrs. Bellendean’s brow which had not been there before. ‘You saw something of him during the summer?’
‘Something—oh, a great deal! We got quite used to see him appearing in his flannels. Fine exercise for a young fellow: It helped him to support London,’ said the guileless Colonel. ‘I think he found us very handy here.’
‘Old fellows, I suspect, think more of exercise than young fellows,’ said Mrs. Hayward; ‘and London is very supportable in Captain Bellendean’s circumstances—but we did see a little of him from time to time.’
Joyce said nothing at all. She kept a little behind, away from Mrs. Bellendean’s anxious eyes. She could not prevent the colour from deepening in her face, or her heart from beating high and loud in her breast—so loud that she felt it must be heard by others as well as herself, the most distinct sound in the room.
‘He has not been here very lately, I suppose?’ Mrs. Bellendean said.
‘Oh no, not since August—when he came to bid us good-bye.’
‘As I am doing now,’ said Mrs. Bellendean. She could not see Joyce, who was behind her, but she was noting, with the intensest observation, every movement and word. She was on a voyage of discovery, not quite knowing what she expected, almost too eager to distinguish what she imagined from what she saw.
‘Shooting, I suppose,’ said the Colonel. ‘I hope he has had good sport. There was some talk of his coming back, but I never expected him for my part, until the moors began to pall; and that doesn’t happen soon, your first year at home. You preserved, of course, at Bellendean.’
‘There are always plenty of partridges—nothing more exciting. He has been up in the Highlands, coming and going. I think he has thoroughly enjoyed himself—as you say, the first year at home.’
These words were all very simple and natural; but there was a little emphasis here and there, which betrayed a meaning more than met the ear. Joyce felt them fall upon her heart like so many stones, thrown singly, resolutely, with intention. It had never occurred to her before that any one could wish to give her pain: and that her own lady should do it—her model of all that was greatest and sweetest! The cruel boys throw stones at wounded, helpless things. She remembered suddenly, with that quickness of imagination which enhances every impression, a scene which detached itself from the past—a boy in the village aiming steadily at a lame dog, and how she had flung herself upon him in a blaze of indignation, to his supreme astonishment. Why this should come into her head she could not tell. The dog could yelp at least, but Joyce could not cry out. It seemed to her that it was Mrs. Bellendean, in her mature, middle-aged beauty, tall, dignified, and serene, who stood and took aim. It was all new to Joyce—the covert blow, the deliberate intention, the strong necessity of keeping still, uttering no sound, giving no look even of consciousness. Nothing in her past experience had prepared her for this.
‘I have more sympathy with your plans than with Captain Bellendean’s amusements,’ said Mrs. Hayward. ‘Sport’s monotonous, at least to women who only look on. But to get away for the winter is always delightful. Oh, not to you, Henry, I know! You like your walks. And he tells me it is so English, so like home. Very English indeed, and pleasant, for girls who skate, and all that; but when one begins to get old and go about in a shawl!’
‘I would willingly compound for the shawl,’ said the visitor. ‘It is cold enough at Bellendean; but there one had both duties and pleasures. I hate to be one of a useless crowd, drifting about pleasure-places. When it’s health it is dismal enough; but at least there is some meaning in that.’
‘Oh, there is a great deal of meaning in being warm,’ cried Mrs. Hayward, with a little shiver, ‘in seeing sunshine and the blue sky instead of universal greyness and fogs. The Colonel takes a pleasure in it, even in east wind; but so do not I.’
‘My dear,’ cried Colonel Hayward anxiously, ‘if you really do feel so strongly about it, you don’t think that I would ever object? I like my own country, I confess; and to understand what everybody’s saying—but if you feel the cold so much——’
It was not much wonder that he should not understand; but Joyce, for whom the thing was done, knew almost as little as he did that this diversion was for her benefit. A half-forlorn wonder arose in her mind that so much useless, aimless talk should mingle with the torture through which she was going. Better that the stones should all be thrown, and the victim left in peace. But this was not how it was to be. The gong sounded, beaten by Baker’s powerful hand, and the little procession went in to luncheon. Joyce had to expose her face, with all its clouds, the burning red which she felt on her cheek, the heavy shadow about her eyes, to the full daylight and Mrs. Bellendean’s searching gaze. Nobody could help her now.