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.