‘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.