Joyce had to come to a resolution at which she herself wondered, in
forlorn helplessness, as if some other being within her had decided upon
it and not she. That she, all shy, shrinking, reticent as she was, with
the limitations of her peasant pride and incapacity for self-revelation,
should attach a last desperate hope to the possibility of enlightenment
from some one else’s judgment, was wonderful to herself. For how could
she lay that tangled question before any one, or unfold her soul? how
could any stranger know what her perplexity was, between the claims of
the old tranquil yet enthusiastic affections of her youth, and the
strange unconfessed dream of absorbing feeling which had swept her soul
of late--between the pledges of her tender ignorance, and the
fulfilments of a life to which fuller knowledge had come? She did not
herself understand how she had come to stand at this terrible
turning-point, or why she should thus be summoned to decide not only her
own fate, but that of others; and how could she explain it to strangers
who knew nothing, neither how she was bound, nor wherein she was free?
And yet there came a longing over her which could not be silenced--to
ask some one--to make a tribunal for herself, and plead her cause before
it, and hear what the oracle would say. Perhaps it was because all her
lights had failed her, and all her faculties contradicted each other,
that this despairing thought suggested itself--to discover an oracle,
and to find out what it would say.
Of whom could she ask, and who could fill this place to her? Not her
father. Joyce did not say to herself that the good Colonel was not a
wise man, though he was so kind. Had he been the wisest of men, she
would have shrunk from placing her heart unveiled in his hand. For to
the father everything must be said. He is no oracle; he is a sovereign
judge: that was not the help her case required. Her step-mother was more
impossible still. If not to him, still less to her, could the girl, so
cruelly wounded, so torn in divers directions, lay open her misery and
difficulty. Not to any one could she lay them open. It was an oracle she
wanted--something to which a half-revelation, an enigmatical confession
would suffice--who would understand before anything was spoken, and give
a deliverance which, perhaps, would be capable of various
interpretations, which should not approach too closely to the facts.
This was what she wanted without knowing what she wanted, with only a
strong longing to have light--light such as was not in her own troubled
self-questionings and thoughts.
Joyce had not many friends among the people who surrounded Mrs. Hayward
with a flutter of society and social obligations. Indeed Mrs. Hayward
herself had not many friends, and it is doubtful whether she would have
found one to whose judgment she could resort for advice, as Joyce meant
to do. But, the girl was perhaps more discriminating by a natural
instinct as to who was to be trusted--perhaps in her far higher ideality
more trustful. At all events, there were two very different persons to
whom, after much tossing about on the dark sea of her distress, her
thoughts turned. A little light might come from them; she might unfold
herself to them partially, fancifully, leaving them to guess the word of
the enigma, finding some comfort in what they said, even if it should
fall wide of the mark. When Mrs. Hayward set out to pay her visits in
the afternoon, Joyce stole forth almost furtively, though all the world
might have seen her going upon her innocent search after wisdom; but the
world, even as represented in a comparatively innocent suburban place,
would have been at once startled and amused to note at what shrine it
was that Joyce sought wisdom and the teaching of the oracle. She went
not to any of the notable people, not to the clergy, or even to Mrs.
Sitwell, who was supposed to be her friend, and who was known to be so
clever. Joyce did not at all know that the parson’s wife had played her
false, and she had seen more of that lady than of any one else in the
place. But this was not because of any innate sympathy, but because of
the pertinacity with which Mrs. Sitwell had seized upon Joyce as a
useful auxiliary in the carrying out of her own ends--and the girl’s
instinct rejected that artificial bond, and put no faith in the
cleverness which she acknowledged, nor even in the goodness after its
kind, which Joyce’s mind was large enough to acknowledge too. She went
not to Mrs. Sitwell, nor to the parson, Mrs. Sitwell’s husband, but she
threaded through many lanes and devious ways until she came to a door in
a wall with a little bright brass knocker, and a grating, and great
thorny branches of a bare rose-tree straggling over. Within was a small
neat green garden, and a little house looking out upon it with shining
windows. And within that, coming hastily to the door to meet her, was
Miss Marsham, whom everybody knew to be as good as gold, but nobody
imagined to be wise or instructive in any way. Joyce had come to find
her oracle here.
The room was small and low, full of old china, old pictures, a little
collection of relics, in the midst of which their gentle mistress, a
mild spirit clad with only as much body as was strictly essential, and
with an old gown constructed on the same principles, with just as much
old and somewhat faded silk as was strictly necessary, appeared in
perfect harmony, the soul of the little dainty place. She received Joyce
with the tenderest welcome, in which there was something more than her
usual kindness, and an anxiety which Joyce, full of her own thoughts,
never perceived. Miss Marsham was ready and prepared to be confided in.
She was prepared for the story of Joyce’s youth, for the revelation of
her peasant parents, and how for their good she had sacrificed herself
to Colonel Hayward’s fancy--ready to understand at half a word, to
condone and to condole, to give praise for the noble motive, the
self-sacrifice, and only gently--very gently--to touch upon the
deception, which the severest critic could not consider to be Joyce’s
fault. She kissed her and said, ‘My dear child, my poor Joyce,’ with a
tender pity which forestalled every explanation. Did she then already
know Joyce’s trouble and sore perplexity? but how was it possible that
she should know?
‘You must not think I have come just to call,’ Joyce said.
‘No, dear? but why shouldn’t you come just to call? There will never,
never be any circumstances in which I shall not be glad to have you
come. My dear, circumstances don’t matter at all to me when I know any
one as I know you!’
Joyce was a little bewildered by this effusion. She said, with a faint
smile, ‘And yet you don’t know me well. I have been here just five
months, and part of that away----’
‘My love, when you understand a person and love a person, as I do you,
the time does not count by months.’
‘That is what I feel: and I have nobody--nobody to look to:--you will
say my father, Miss Marsham. He is kind, kind--but oh, I have not been
brought up with him nor used to open my heart,--and in some things he
knows only one language and me another--and besides, if I were to tell
him everything, he would say what I was to do, and I would have to obey.
And Mrs. Hayward with him, they would settle it all,--and I am not used
to it, and I cannot----’
‘No, Joyce, I understand--it is they who have led you into it--you can’t
ask advice from them.’
‘They did not lead me into it,’ said Joyce. ‘It was just nature led me
into it, and the perversity of things. Will you ever have noticed in
your life how things go wrong? Nobody means any harm, and all you do is
innocent; and even if you were very prudent and weighed everything
beforehand, there would not be one step that you could say
afterwards--This was wrong. And yet things all turn wrong, and your
heart is broken, and nothing is to blame.’
‘Oh, Joyce, words cannot say how sorry I am! There was one thing
perhaps, my dear, a little wrong--for to deceive in any way, even if it
seems to do no harm and is with the best motive--the highest motive, to
help those you love----’
Joyce sighed softly to herself, no longer asking how Miss Marsham could
know, then shook her head. ‘I wish it had been for that motive; but
there was no love, no love,--I,’ with a sudden blush, ‘did not know what
love meant.’
Miss Marsham looked up with an exclamation of astonishment on her lips,
but stopped with her mouth open, wondering. Joyce, whose eyes were cast
down, did not see the impulse at all.
‘He had read a great deal--a great deal,’ said the girl. ‘I have never
met any one--oh, not here nor anywhere--so well instructed. I thought
then that there was nothing so grand as that. He had read a great deal
more than I!--he was my--superior in that. It is true, I always knew all
the time that I was not--what seemed---- But that might never have come
to anything, and besides, I would have thought shame. For I thought that
to know the poets, and all that has been written--that was what made a
gentleman. Oh, I think shame to say such a thing,--it doesn’t---- how
can I say it? It seems there must be something more.’
Miss Marsham remained silent in simple bewilderment. Joyce was now
talking her own language, which nobody understood.
‘You may say it was deceiving to let him think I cared for him, but that
was never what I intended. He said at first, it was enough for him to
care for me. Oh, but that is nothing, nothing!’ cried Joyce suddenly,
‘that is only the beginning. Though I cannot keep my word to him, I need
not break it,--that would have been easy. It is far, far worse what is
to come.’
Miss Marsham took Joyce’s hands into hers. She was lost in amazement,
and felt herself swimming, floating wildly, at sea, among things
altogether strange and incomprehensible. She could not reply, but there
is always sympathy in a pressure of the hands.
‘There was nothing wrong in meeting another man that was my father’s
friend, that was my dear lady’s son,’ said Joyce, very low; ‘how was I
to know that he and me would see each other different from--common folk?
How was I to know that they had made it up for him to be the love of--of
another girl? And now here I stand,’ she cried, rising up holding out
her hands in piteous explanation, ‘pledged to one, and caring nothing
for him, harming another that but for me would do what was meant for
him, would do--would do well--with a lady bred like himself, born like
himself, not one that had been abandoned like me. Tell me what you would
do if you were me! The lady comes and asks me--she has no right. She
says that I know trouble and sorrow, but Greta never a disappointment,
never a thing that was not happy--and that she’ll break her heart; and
nobody cares for mine. And she says I should keep my word, though she
was the first to say he was not the one for me. And oh, what am I to
do--what am I to do?’
Joyce sank down again upon the seat, and covered her face with her
hands.
‘Oh, my poor Joyce--my dear Joyce!’ Miss Marsham cried.
Her head was not very clear at any time--it was apt to get confused with
a very small matter. And Joyce’s story was confusion worse confounded to
the anxious hearer. Even what she thought to be her knowledge of the
circumstances deepened Miss Marsham’s bewilderment. She knew of the man
to whom Joyce was engaged, from whom all the information came; but the
after episode--half told, hurried over, which Joyce had no mind to
explain fully, which she addressed to the oracle--was as a veil thrown
over poor Miss Marsham’s understanding. She knew none of these people;
the name of Greta brought no enlightenment to her, nor did she know who
the lady was, nor who the man was who was mixed up inextricably in this
strange imbroglio. She drew Joyce’s hands from her face, and laid that
hidden face upon her own kind breast, kneeling down to caress and to
soothe the poor girl in her trouble. But what to say or what to do Miss
Marsham knew not. She did not understand the delicate case upon which
her advice was required. And the oracle was mute. There was no response
to give. ‘Oh, my poor child, my dear child, my poor dear love!’ Miss
Marsham cried.
After a minute Joyce raised her head and looked at her friend in whom
she trusted. She was very pale, her eyes were wet with tears, and looked
large and liquid in caves of trouble,--her mouth quivered a little,
like the mouth of a child when its passion-fit is over, and there was a
pathetic little break in her voice. ‘Tell me,’ she said, with a look
that searched the very soul, ‘tell me what you would do--if you were
me.’
‘Oh, my pretty Joyce--my poor dear!’
‘Tell me,’ the girl said, ‘would you break _her_ heart and wound _him_,
all for yourself? Would you break your word and your pledge that you
gave when you were poor, all for yourself? as if you had to be happy
whatever happened--you! And what right had you to be happy, any more
than Greta--or Greta more than you?’
The question, heaven knows, was vague enough--but the oracle was no
longer mute. The pilgrim at the shrine had touched the true chord, and
at last the priestess spoke. She had a moment of that ecstasy, of that
semi-trance of mingled reluctance and eagerness, which makes those pause
who have the response of the unseen to give forth to feeble men. Her
gentle eyes lit up, then dimmed again; a brightness came over her faded
face, giving it a momentary gleam of eternal youth, then disappeared.
She trembled a little as she held the votary to her breast.
‘Oh Joyce! my darling Joyce! I don’t know that I quite understand you,
dear. It is all so mixed up. Things that I have heard and that you tell
me are so different. I don’t know what to think--but if it’s a question
between you and another, which is to take the happiness and let the
other suffer--oh, my child, my dear! do I need to say it to you--do I
need to tell you? Joyce, your heart tells you--it’s like a, b, c, to a
woman. You know----’
‘I thought,’ said Joyce, with that sob in her throat, following with
intent eyes every little movement of her agitated instructor-- ‘I thought
that was what you would say.’
‘Yes,’ said the vestal, the priestess of this new Dodona, ‘it is not in
our will to choose or to change. You can’t leave the heartbreak to
another. You have to take it, though your spirit may cry out and refuse.
I am not wise to give you advice, oh my darling! but I know this, and
every woman knows it. Oh, it isn’t all that do it, I know, for it’s not
an easy thing. But when you have strength from above, you can do it. And
what is more, it is not in your nature to do anything else. So don’t ask
me what I would do. You could not--do--any other thing: being you and
nobody else: Joyce _that_ I know.’
‘No,’ said Joyce, stumbling, rising to her feet, meeting with a solemn
look the wet and weeping eyes of her oracle, ‘no, not any other thing.’
‘Not any other thing.’ Miss Marsham would have kept her in her arms,
would have wooed her to further speech, would have wept over her and
caressed her, and expended all the treasures of her heart in soothing
the martyr whom she had thus consecrated. But of this Joyce was not
capable. She had got her oracle, and it was clear. It was what she had
wanted, not advice, but that divine and vague enigma which corresponded
with the enigma of her confession. She resisted gently the softness of
her friend’s clinging embrace. Her eyes were full of the awe of the
victim who consents and accepts, and is restrained by every solemnity of
her religion from any struggle--but who already feels herself to be
outside this world of secondary consolations, face to face with the
awful realities of the sacrifice. ‘Don’t keep me,’ she said faintly,
putting away the thin kind hands that would have held her, ‘I must go--I
must go.’
‘Oh Joyce,’ cried Miss Marsham, stricken with a secret terror, ‘I hope I
have said right!’
‘I am sure you have said right; it is what I knew. I could not--do--any
other thing. Let me go, Miss Marsham, let me go, for more I cannot
bear.’
‘Oh, my dearest, I hope I have done right! Oh, stay a little and tell me
more! Oh Joyce, God bless you, God bless you, my dear, if you must go!’
She followed the girl to the little door, so flowery and embowered in
summer, now overshadowed by those straggling bare branches of the
rose-tree, which were good for nothing but to make, had that been
wanted, a sharp garland of thorns. Joyce scarcely turned to answer her
blessings and good-byes, but went on straight from the door as if
hurrying to the place of sacrifice. The thought was folly, Miss Marsham
said to herself, and yet it went with a chill to her heart and would not
be chased away.