CHAPTER XLII
YOU could not do—any other thing. If there could be a proof of the divinity of the oracle it was this. It addressed that something within which is more than any external hearing. ‘When thou wast under the fig-tree.’ Who could tell what was in the spirit in secret but the perfect Teacher, who saw all? Joyce received in something of the same way the utterance which had been given in such darkness on the part of its exponent, as is the way of oracles. She felt that it was the true and only revelation. She hurried along in the wintry twilight, her head bent down, avoiding the cold night wind; her heart beating loudly; her eyes hot and suffused with scalding tears, which did not fall; her feet cold, stumbling over every little stone. The certainty which had replaced her doubts and conflicts of mind was scarcely less confusing than they: it did not inspire her as in the procession to the place of sacrifice. Ah! had she to do that boldly in the face of man for a great cause, Joyce knew how high she could have carried her head, and marched with what steady force and triumph. But the way was dark and tortuous, and full of fears,—the wind in her face so cold, the sensation in her heart so full of misery. The oracle had spoken right. It had been what she wanted. It had made her see clearly, driving from her eyes those films of weakness that come up upon the wind and obscure the vision, even when it is most clear. She remembered now that there never could have been any doubt, that she was even pledged to that sole course. Had she not said, ‘I will do as you wish?’ and had not she been blessed and thanked for her resolution? and yet it had failed, and she had sought the oracle—to have it confirmed, as it was right it should be.
Ah! but the oracle is pitiless too. It has no regard for the weakness of—common folk. Joyce was one who had held her head very high, who never in her consciousness had been one of the common folk. But now, in her despair, consenting to the sacrifice demanded of her, yet with partial revulsions of her mind against it, she took refuge in that common strain of humanity. Those oracles which spoke out of the veiled heights, from which the votaries with bleeding hearts, all torn with special wounds, received such stern and abstract answers—they were right, but they were remorseless. They took nothing into consideration, not the weakness of the victim, nor that bewildering way in which, though cleared off for a moment, doubts and mists would rise again, obscuring, confusing the most certain truth. They had no pity. The devotee, indeed, went to them only for that—to have the support of a certain reply, to hear what, beyond all control of circumstances, was just and right. And for a moment there would be a great calm after the reply had come. But then there would start into the aching heart this complaint: It was remorseless that reply, there was no pity in it. You could not—do any other thing. It was true, true! and yet there were so many other things that could be done; and it was hard, hard for flesh and blood to conform to that pitiless abstract law: it had no regard for the weakness of—common folk. And what was Joyce, after all, but a girl like another?—very little different from Greta, who had to be shielded from trouble: just like the rest—young, fragile, like the girls whom everybody took care of. Oh, the oracle was hard! it had no pity. It never took into account how much or how little a girl could bear!
This murmur in the heart growing louder as she went on, with strange additions and exasperations from the cold, and the dark, and the physical discomfort around, at last roused Joyce to a kind of despairing rebellion. After you have made your sortes and read your fate, does it ever happen that you do not try, or wish to try, another time? Open the book again—be it Virgil, be it the Bible, be it anything, at haphazard, from which superstition or fancy can take a fancied guidance. Try the oracle again. It was the suggestion of despair. But Joyce had always thought of two from whom she might seek the direction she could no longer give herself. She reminded herself now, stopping in her hurried walk towards home, saying with natural sophistry that her consultation of fate was incomplete, that she had always meant the trial to be double. She had always intended it. She had meant to lay her case before him too. He was very unlike the other—the priestess, the vestal, whose decisions Joyce felt in her despair no one could have doubted for a moment. He was very, very different. It was only just that he too should give his verdict. They were the two sides which ought to stand in every question, which see the matter from different points, which balance and temper each other. Joyce’s heart beat very high; the blood again began to run warm in her veins, reaching her feet, her hands, which were so cold. She turned and hastened back to the rectory, which she had passed.
It was dark by this time, and the lamps were being lighted, coming into life one by one along the darkling way. And the house was half dark, the lights dazzling her in the hall, while there was nothing but soft firelight in the drawing-room, which she passed hastily, telling the servant that it was the Canon she came to see. The Canon was seated at his table writing, or pretending to himself to write, his sermon. He bounded up from his seat with a violent convulsion through all the house, making the windows ring and the boards creak, and the very walls shake, when with some difficulty he realised who his visitor was. ‘Joyce!’ he cried, with a roll of mild thunder in his voice, and took her by the hand and placed her in a chair. He was much astonished by her visit, yet felt that he knew what had brought her here. The poor girl had heard what was being said about her, and she had come perhaps to confess, if there was anything in that story, that she was a mere foundling, and not Hayward’s daughter (but the Canon knew there was nothing in that)—perhaps to ask him for his help, for his advice. And he was pleased beforehand, before she opened her mouth, that she should come to him—not to that man at St. Augustine’s, though she had been so much with those Sitwells, but to himself, a much better guide, whom she had said she liked best. Jealousies do not exist between man and man, we know, as they do between woman and woman—and especially not between clergyman and clergyman—but yet the Canon was pleased that it was to him Joyce had come.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘here you are, and I’m delighted to see you. It is not often you go about paying visits, Joyce.’
‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘never.’ The shock of finding herself here, opposite to him, in the place of a penitent, come to tell her tale, brought the colour to Joyce’s face. She gave him one look, and then turned her eyes away. He was very, very different from Miss Marsham. To sit there and tell him everything struck Joyce as impossible. She had never intended to tell everything. She had meant that the oracle should half divine, should understand before she spoke.
‘Come,’ he said, ‘don’t lose courage now you are here. You’ve come to tell me all about it, Joyce.’
Joyce only looked at him again, her eyes enlarged with alarm and terror, wondering after all, she who desired to be understood without speaking, what and how he knew. She said under her breath, her eyes being the chief speakers, the words seeming nothing, ‘I want you to tell me what to do.’
‘You want me——? What are you saying, Joyce? Come, you are not afraid of me. I’m your father’s old friend, you know. I don’t believe any of that nonsense, and I’m your friend against the world, my dear. Come, speak out, don’t be afraid of me.’
He drew his chair nearer hers, once more making the house quiver, and laying his hand upon her shoulder, patted it encouragingly. ‘Come, Joyce, be a man,’ the Canon said, with the little tremble of a laugh in his big voice.
Joyce answered him only with her eyes. They seemed to grow bigger and bigger in her pale face, telling him a hundred things; but she could not find her voice. She had meant to tell him as much at least as she had told Miss Marsham; but when she found herself before him, a man, with that confused story of hers which was not for a man’s ears, Joyce was struck dumb. She made an effort to say something, but failed again. He kept his hand on her shoulder patting it, encouraging her as if she had been a child, ‘Come, Joyce, tell me all about it. You are not afraid of me.’
Her voice burst forth suddenly, as if she had forced it, or rather as if it had forced an outlet for itself from some place where it had been pent up. ‘Oh, sir!’ Joyce cried, ‘I cannot speak; but tell me one thing,—if there are two and one must suffer, and you are one of them—must you never make a question, but consent and accept that it shall be you?’
The Canon was altogether taken by surprise. The burst of the voice, hoarse at first, afterwards clearing and quickening in its passionate strain, the question that had nothing to do with what he had expected to hear, but was an abstract question, startled him beyond expression. ‘Why, Joyce, Joyce—what is this?’ he said.
She turned to him, growing bolder. ‘If you are one of two, and one of them must break her heart—and you are the one that is used to that, and the other has known no trouble. Do not ask me what I mean,’ said Joyce, ‘but oh, you that are a minister, you that have to guide those that are wandering and lost, tell me! They say that it is like a, b, c, and every woman knows; but you are not a woman, you are a man. You will not be carried away by feeling as they are. You will be more just. You will know.’
‘My poor child,’ said the Canon. He too, like Miss Marsham, took her hand, in utter failure of any other way to help her, and held it, patting it softly between his. ‘Joyce,’ he said, ‘my dear you’re right. I am only a man, I can’t divine what you mean unless you tell me. As far as I can make out, somebody has been talking nonsense to you. What is this a, b, c, that every woman knows? If you’ll believe me, Joyce, a woman is just like a man so far as duty goes. There’s no law for one more than the other. Tell me what it is, seriously, Joyce.’
She looked up at him once more and opened her lips to speak; but again the impossibility of telling that tale to him closed her lips. Joyce was nearly in despair, and she had a clinging to him as to her friend, one who would help her if he could, one who knew many things and might understand. But when she looked up at the Canon’s middle-aged countenance and at his large prosperous person, and the capacious round of his black silk waistcoat, and the air about him of a man who had everything and abounded, her courage and confidence failed her. She was dumb. To tell her youthful trouble to him, all mixed up as it was with love and lovers and trifling things, though so great to her, a matter of life and death—to him, who would be moved by none of these matters—how could she do it? She drew a long breath, which ended in something like a sob— ‘It is—it is a case of conscience,’ she said, with her wistful eyes fixed upon him, making revelations which he could not understand.
‘A case of conscience!’ he said; ‘this is one of your evasions not to speak out. You’re like other women, Joyce, which is no shame to you; you would like me to be at all the expense of the talk, my dear, and give you my advice without any knowledge of the circumstances. Let us see what premisses we’ve got. If I were one of two and knew that one must suffer, would I take it upon me without question that the sufferer must be I—is that what you call the a, b, c, that every woman knows? A great many women are fools, my dear, but not such fools as that. No, Joyce! I should take up no such idea. I should say, let him suffer who deserved it, who had brought it on himself.’
‘No,’ said Joyce very low. ‘She has not done that: we are not ill-deserving—it’s no—no wrong—oh, neither her nor me!’
‘It is something between two women,’ said the clear-sighted Canon. ‘It is love then, and there is a man in the question too.’
She made him no reply; but she turned away her face from him, and the Canon saw the colour rise like a fire over her cheek from throat to brow.
‘And somebody has put it into your head that the easy way out of it—the fairest way—is to sacrifice yourself? It was a woman that said that, and told you it was the a, b, c. I shouldn’t wonder if it was that old fool Cissy Marsham, it would be just like her. Now, Joyce listen to me——’
‘She is not a fool,’ said Joyce, turning her face to him again.
‘Don’t tell me! She’s worth a dozen of any of us, but she may be a fool for all that. Now listen to me, Joyce. I say no: do you hear? There’s no a, b, c, but plain right and wrong. As for self-sacrifice, in the majority of cases it’s a mere silly, idiotic, if not horrible, mistake. Generally it does good to nobody. You fling your own happiness away, and you don’t secure any one else’s. My dear girl, to consider other people first is in some cases not only uncalled for but wrong.’
Joyce had kept her eyes fixed upon his face. At this there came over hers a faint smile, and she softly shook her head.
‘She doesn’t believe me,’ said the Canon,—‘none of them do; on this point good women are all fools, and the better they are the greater fools they are. God bless my soul!—who made you your brother’s keeper? How do you know what’s best for him? Who gave you the right to humiliate him by sacrificing yourself to him—or her? what does it matter? it’s all the same, him or her. I tell you,’ cried the Canon, jumping up suddenly, walking round to the fireplace, and standing up against the glow of the fire, his large person rising like a mountain, flinging over Joyce a great shadow, ‘women like Cissy Marsham are a pest, they’re a plague in the place, with their a, b, c, and their creed for a woman. Nonsense, my dear! that’s all nonsense, my dear! What’s law for a man is law for a woman. There’s no other. Don’t break anybody’s heart if you can help it; but in the name of common-sense, go your own way and take what God gives you, and have the courage to be happy if He puts happiness into your hands!’ The Canon puffed out a hot breath of impatience, and shook himself in his easy large garments as if to settle them all into their places, shaking the house at the same time and making everything ring—‘whatever Cissy Marsham may say, the old fool, God bless her!’ he cried, with a laugh, throwing himself down again into a big easy-chair.
But Joyce made no reply. It is in the nature of an oracle to divine what is congenial to the nature of the devotee—to give a deliverance which, however confusing, will have something in it which will carry out its natural tendencies, and agree with his inner sense. But to Joyce this voice brought no such message. To be bidden to be happy was no part of her requirements. She did not understand what happiness in the abstract was. According to her austere peasant training, it was so far from being the object of life, that to seek it was an unworthy and undignified, even wrong thing. She had been happy all her life without knowing; but to look for happiness, to seek it, to make it the object of every exertion, was incompatible with all the rules of life which she knew. ‘Happy! you will just do your work and your duty, and be thankful for what the Lord sends ye,’ Janet Matheson would have said. What the Canon said was not very different: ‘Go your own way and take what God gives.’ But the meaning was different; oh, the meaning was different! Don’t break anybody’s heart if you can help it; but if you do, never mind—have the courage to be happy all the same. This oracle spoke too loudly, too plainly, with too distinct a note. It found no echo in her heart. It was not the guidance for which she craved.
The Canon saw perhaps that he had not been successful. He tried to draw her into conversation of a less momentous kind. ‘I hear you’ve had some visitors from your old home, Joyce. I fear they’ve been injudicious visitors, talking a great deal of nonsense; but I hope they brought you good news at least of your people—old people, weren’t they, that brought you up? I’m ready to give them a certificate of success in that line,’ the Canon added in his fine bass, which lent itself very tenderly to these paternal words, and with a pleasant laugh.
Joyce looked up at him with a startled glance. She had, indeed, put no question to Andrew as to the beloved old people. There had not been a word about them, or any other question of life—nothing but his claim, and her resistance yet acknowledgment, and all the confused miserable discussions. She seemed to fall into a slough of despond, the miry pit and the horrible clay of the Scriptures, when her heart went back, sick, to that visit. Ah! she thought, had that been all—had there been nothing but Andrew! But with the instinct of her natural reticence she only replied, ‘They are well—they always write that they are well.’
‘That’s good.’ Dr. Jenkinson meant to take advantage of the opportunity to ask further questions, to elicit, if he could, something of the true story upon which Mrs. Sitwell had built her romance; but when he looked at Joyce’s pale and musing face, and saw that the girl could scarcely withdraw herself from the consideration of her perplexity, whatever it was, to answer him, and that she had no attention to give to other matters, his heart smote him. He could not question her, force her out of herself, to satisfy his curiosity. He said nothing more for a whole minute; but the silence did not frighten Joyce, nor force her to speak. She sat lost in her own problem, to which he felt his energetic counsel had brought no light. The Canon had been impatient; he had thought it best to crush these foolish womanish thoughts on the threshold of her mind; but he had not succeeded. What he had said had been a disappointment and confusion only—no enlightenment to Joyce.
‘Come,’ he said, ‘we can’t sit silent like this and look at the fire. When you and me get together we want to talk, Joyce. Give me some of your opinions. You’re not satisfied with mine, I can see.’
She looked up at him without any smile and shook her head.
‘Out with it!’ cried the Canon. ‘We always do have a little fight. Let me hear where I am wrong. That’s the worst of your Saint Cissy, and other such. They don’t say a word for themselves, they’re only meekly obstinate after the manner of saints. Come! out with it, Joyce!’
‘Oh,’ said Joyce, ‘I cannot speak! My heart says no to you, but I cannot give a reason—it’s because it’s far too serious. I thought of her and of you, that are so different, that might give me a light where all is dark—but I can give no reason. I must just go on till the moment, and then do—what is put into my heart.’
‘My poor child!’ cried the Canon, alarmed, ‘can’t you tell me what is wrong? Do nothing rash, whatever it is—do nothing that can’t be undone. Joyce, I am afraid of you. You are not like the rest of them: never mind any nonsense I have said, but tell me, tell me sincerely, what is wrong. Don’t shake your head. You have come to consult me of your own free will—tell me what it is——’
‘I cannot,’ she said piteously; ‘I cannot!—oh, I would if I could: it’s maybe nothing at all—I cannot speak. It’s—it’s love that is stronger than death,’ cried the girl, ‘and love that is nothing, that is but fancy, and a dream—— I’ll think nothing more of it. I’ll think nothing! The moment may never come, and if it comes, no one can help me. I must do—what is in my heart——’
The Canon drew his chair in front of her with a look that was more searching than his questions, and which she could not support save for a second. ‘Mind what I say, Joyce. Nobody made you your brother’s keeper. If it’s beautiful to make a sacrifice, as you women think, it’s shameful to accept one. Remember that. You’ve no right to put a shame and humiliation upon another. It’s a humiliation—you would yourself refuse it and scorn it. Joyce, whatever you may be tempted to do, remember what I say——’
She tried to speak, struggling with tears. ‘The greatest of all—was a sacrifice, a sacrifice——’
‘Hush!’ he said imperatively. ‘When there is One to be found in His conditions there need be no discussion. And that one man should die for the people, I allow—and that you should die physically rather than let another die, if it is in your heart to do it, that I allow. But that you should make yourself the judge in other circumstances, and shame another by suffering for him when you know neither his heart, nor what is best for him, nor anything but your own wild enthusiasm—that I forbid, Joyce. I forbid it, being your priest, to whom you have come for light.’
Joyce raised her wistful eyes, which were wet with tears hanging on the lashes. But she shook her head. She was a little Presbyterian, as he had said. Perhaps the name of the priest lessened instead of strengthening his power.