Halliday was both gloomy and angry when he left home, full of that sense
of unappreciated merit which cuts with peculiar keenness into the minds
of those who entertain no doubt as to their own superiority over the
ordinary level; but the influence of external things and the distraction
of travel soon succeeded in clearing to a great degree his mental
firmament. The bustle of the great station at Edinburgh, the care of
selecting a comfortable corner for his journey, the hurrying and rush of
less fortunate persons hampered by luggage and children, amused his mind
and distracted his thoughts. He travelled, as a matter of course, in the
third-class; and, equally as a matter of course, he regarded with a
dignified derision the stalwart young men in deer-stalking coats, and
with every superfluity imaginable in the way of wraps and sticks and
dressing-cases, who indulged themselves in the luxury of
sleeping-carriages. Sybarites he called them in his mind, with a
half-contemptuous, half-indulgent smile--frivolous creatures, altogether
unaware that in a corner of a third-class carriage a man so much their
superior in everything was calmly regarding them, making the inevitable
comparison between folly and its comfortable cushions, and wisdom,
which, if it did not trudge afoot, yet used only such conveniences as
dignified necessity required. The deer-stalking young men, who never
thought of the matter, would indeed have been highly surprised had they
known how they were set down at their proper value by their travelling
companion. The comparison did Andrew good: it made him feel his own
dignity, his superiority to the external, yet made his breast swell with
a pathetic wonder. Was it perhaps possible that Joyce, after three
months’ experience of luxury, should prefer these brainless ones, so
much lower in the intellectual scale? Surely, surely that could not be
possible. He saw with a smile that they took copies of the _Field_ and
the _Sporting News_ into their luxurious carriages with them. He
himself had the _Saturday Review_. There is nothing so sustaining as
this sense of being better than one’s neighbours. It comforted poor
Andrew, and kept him warm during his journey. The gentlemen in the
sleeping-carriages might rest better, but they did not, nay could not,
feel half the moral elevation of the schoolmaster in his corner of the
third-class.
London, too, veiled in a grey-and-yellow fog, through which the lamps,
not yet extinguished, and a line of dusky sunrise among the clouds,
looked red, brought an excitement to his mind which few perhaps of the
companions of his journey shared. Andrew greeted the great city as
people greet it in books,--as adventurers in the days of Dr. Johnson
saluted that centre of the world. He thought with a tingle of strange
emotion in his breast that the great roar of humanity might become
familiar to his ears ere long. He rose to the sound and commotion with a
sense of predestined greatness. The people in the sleeping-carriages
tumbled out drowsily, rubbing their eyes in the midst of a dream. But
Andrew stepped forth inspired by the recollection of many a great man
who had arrived like himself, not knowing what might befall him. His
hopes, his courage rose more and more as he felt where he was--in a
great place where he was sure to be understood, and where the human mind
was in a perpetual progress, not stagnant as in the country. He felt,
indeed, not as he had done when he left home, as if his mission were a
forlorn hope, but rather as if he were coming like a conqueror to see
and to vanquish. It wanted only, he said to himself, that touch of
reality to chase all the chimeras away. He would, he must, find Joyce
faithful as ever, keeping silence only because her plans were not yet
ripened for his advancement. He would find her father full of that
respect which the man of action feels for the man of mind. He would be
received as an honoured guest; he would be admitted into their
confidence, and made acquainted with their hopes. Visions of a noble old
house in some sort of cloistered dignified centre of learning rose again
before his eyes--A. Halliday, Headmaster. He did not definitely fix upon
Eton or Harrow, having no actual knowledge of either of those places;
but something exhilarating, sweet, a strong yet soft delusion, stole
into his being. He was so entirely inexperienced and full of the
ignorance of his class (although a man so well instructed), that he was
not aware of any restriction upon such appointments that could not be
got over by sufficiently powerful influence. Influence could do
everything, Halliday thought.
He got a bath and breakfast at the nearest hotel, undiscouraged even by
its grim and chill nakedness, and feeling a wonderful freedom and
elation in the consciousness of thus doing what the best people did, and
being waited upon, served by a man-servant (if you liked to put it in
that way) like the best. It cost a good deal, but it was worth the
expenditure. The fog cleared off as the morning advanced, and it was in
the sunshine of a bright hazy morning that he set off on the final stage
of his journey. He had dressed himself with the utmost care and all the
resources of his wardrobe. His tie was blue, his coat a frock-coat of
extreme solemnity, which he usually wore at funerals. He thought, as he
was a traveller, that it was the right thing to wear with this a round
hat such as he wore in the country. He had a pair of lavender gloves,
his umbrella was very neatly rolled up--in short, at half a mile off you
recognised his unquestionable character and doubtful gentility with as
much ease as if he had written Andrew Halliday, schoolmaster at Comely
Green, upon his manly breast; but he had not the least idea of that. His
clear and ruddy complexion was a little paled by the night’s journey,
and by the mixture of agitation and excitement which he could not but
feel as the moment of meeting approached. He looked a most respectable
young man, very respectable, honest as the day. You would scarcely have
suspected, however, to see him, how superior he felt to the people in
the sleeping-carriages, and how, when they got the _Field_ and the
_Sporting Times_ at the bookstalls, he had bought the _Saturday Review_.
He went by the railway from Waterloo, admiring the river which ran
glistening grey, like a great worm, under the shining of the wintry
sun--and got out with a great heartbeat at the station. How near he was
now! He felt inclined to take a walk, to see the place and look at the
view, pushing off the decision for a time, the certainty--for he had so
little doubt by this time that it was a certainty--of the happy meeting.
To see Joyce in perhaps a few minutes; to hear her cry of astonishment
and delight; to have her come up to him in her shy way, never
demonstrative, unless perhaps the long separation might have made her
more so. ‘Oh, Andrew! and I was just going to write to tell you----’ He
would not wait till she said ‘about the headmastership.’ He would take
her in his arms, whoever was there (for had he not the right?), and say,
‘About yourself, my dearest--that’s what I want to hear about.’ He
thought he would take a walk first to _savourer_ a little this
delightful scene, and think how she would look and what he would say. It
was so near, so very near! He would keep it at arm’s-length a little in
order to enjoy it the more.
It sobered him, however, to hear that Colonel Hayward’s house was some
distance off, and to receive confused instructions which he could not
follow. As a matter of fact, the instructions were not at all confused,
they were only too rapid and clear. ‘First turning to the right, second
turning to the left; then go straight on till you pass the church; then
first turning, second turning.’ How could he keep all that in his mind?
It was he that was confused, not the direction. If they had said, turn
to the west and then a little to the north---- He stumbled along,
forgetting whether it was the first, second, or third turning he ought
to take, till he came to a church, which was not the church to which he
had been directed; and from thence he stumbled on again by a great many
roads clothed with pretty houses, which bewildered him. He stopped
finally to ask his way of a brisk little lady, who cried, ‘Oh, Colonel
Hayward’s!’ her eyes dancing with instant interest, and a look full of
interrogations, as if she would have liked to ask him a hundred things.
Andrew could scarcely restrain himself from asking, ‘Do you know Joyce?’
He felt at once that this eager little lady jumped at some conclusion
about himself, and was eager to ask who he was--perhaps whether he was
the lover of whom Joyce must have spoken to everybody with whom she was
intimate. And Andrew’s instinct was indeed not far wrong: for Mrs.
Sitwell immediately divined him to be somebody out of the mysterious
past life of which none of the Haywards spoke, and wondered whether,
perhaps, he was some one with whom Joyce had got ‘entangled’ in these
dark ages. She stood and looked after him when she had given him his
instructions, with curious eyes, noting his long frock-coat and his low
hat. How dreadful! she said to herself, and could scarcely contain the
curiosity that filled her. Should she make a hurried round through the
district, and then approach the Haywards’ on the other side, so as to
catch him there, and see with her own eyes the position of affairs? Mrs.
Sitwell knew that Joyce would be just going in with her father from
their morning walk, and would be caught by the visitor, and would be
unable to escape.
Certainly she must know Joyce: she must divine who he was: Andrew said
this to himself, and was further exhilarated and strengthened by the
idea. Of course, Joyce must have told her friends. He went on with
better success this time, inspired by the little active lady with those
eager eyes, who must know--and at last got to the very door. His heart
was beating now very quickly indeed. Joyce’s door--so different from the
cottage where he used to find her. There she had always been shy,
keeping behind old Janet, never willing to permit any demonstration.
Would things be different now? Would she rush to him after his long
separation, laying her head upon his shoulder? This image filled
Andrew’s face with light and colour as he knocked at her father’s door.
‘Is Miss Hayward at home?’ The appearance of Baker gave him a distinct
sensation of pleasure. Colonel Hayward’s butler or upper servant, a
domestic of a high class. Andrew would have liked to see a footman or
two behind, but pleased himself with the thought that this must be
considered higher _ton_. ‘Is Miss Hayward at home?’
‘Miss Hayward? well, I can’t say. She’s been out walking with the
Colonel, and whether they’ve come back or not, I can’t tell you. Mrs.
Hayward is in,’ Baker said. He was not impressed by the appearance of
the visitor. He thought it must be some man from a shop, or a person
about a subscription, at the best.
‘It is not Mistress Hayward but Miss Hayward I want.’
‘Very well,’ said Baker-- ‘I hear you. If you’ll wait a bit, I’ll go and
see.’
And Andrew had to wait, sadly against his will, outside the door.
‘You’ll excuse me, but Missis’s charges are as the door is always to be
shut,’ Baker said, with a restrained chuckle, instinctively delighted to
do his duty in a way that was offensive to the newcomer, whom he saw to
be of inferior condition, and likely to be an undesirable guest.
Andrew’s sensations when he was left outside his love’s door were not
pleasant. He ceased to think of the butler as a high-class domestic, and
called him in his mind a pampered menial, but consoled himself with the
thought of the downfall that would happen to Baker when he knew who it
was whom he had shut out. It was, however, a disagreeable moment of
suspense. He tried to distract his mind by an examination of the great
flower-vases at the door, the shrubs in their winter green, the
perfectly swept and close-cut turf, all the careful surroundings of the
place, not imposing or vast, but so exquisitely kept,--more perfect even
than Bellendean. To think that he should have time to investigate all
this, while she sat within with a beating heart, divining--would she
divine?--his approach. When the butler described him, she would know,
and come rushing out. She would rush to him, and the pampered menial
would see---- At this moment the door opened quickly, and Baker said,
‘Hi! Missis will be obliged if you’ll send in your name.’
This unceremonious address startled Andrew. He said, ‘My name?’ arrested
in the middle of his thoughts.
‘I suppose you’ve got one,’ Baker said.
Though this was so far from the reception he expected, he was not
unprepared. He took his card-case out of his pocket, partially restored
to himself by the pleasure of using it, which was a thing that did not
occur often, and gave the pampered menial a card. He stepped briskly
inside as he did so, resolved to bear no more of this, and followed the
man as he returned to the drawing-room with the card in his hand.
Andrew’s heart beat very quickly now,--his tranquillity was considerably
disturbed. The moment had come: another instant and Joyce would be in
his arms, putting all pampered menials to scorn----
The door opened. There was a faint rustle of ladies’ dresses, a glow of
softened light, the sound of his own name, ‘Mr. Andrew ‘Alliday,’ and
then a cry. She did not rush into his arms. He came to himself after
that interval of excitement, and saw Joyce standing, her hands clasped,
her eyes with a look of horror in them, drawing back as if she would
have fled, with her face turned towards the door. He put down his hat
upon the nearest chair, and crying ‘Joyce!’ went forward with
outstretched arms.