Margaret Maliphant

by Alice Vansittart Strettel Carr

It was the very night before the dance. Jessie Hoad, who had consented to sing for our village concert, had been over and we had been having a practice under Captain Forrester's directions. She was a fashionably dressed, fashionably mannered, fashionably minded young woman, and quite content with herself; she generally resented directions, but she had submitted with a pretty good grace to his.

Miss Thorne had also been in. Joyce in this had shown one of those strange instances of obstinacy that were in her. Mary Thorne had asked to come, and she should not be refused. I remember noticing that Captain Forrester and that particularly gay-tempered young lady seemed to be very intimate together; just, in fact, as people who had known one another from childhood would be. They took the liberty of telling one another home-truths—at least Mary Thorne did (I fancied Frank responded less promptly), and did it in a blunt fashion that was peculiar to her. But I liked blunt people. I liked Mary Thorne very much.

Although she was an heiress to money that had been "sucked from the blood of the people"—to money made from a factory where girls and little children worked long hours out of the sunlight and the fresh air—although she lived in a great house that overlooked acres of land that belonged to her—and although my father could scarcely be got to speak to hers—I liked Mary Thorne. She was so frank and jolly, and took it so as a matter-of-course that we were to be friends, that I always forgot that she rode in a carriage when I walked, and that she and I ought, by rights, not to be so much at ease.

That day she was particularly jolly, and she and I and Captain Forrester laughed together till I was quite ashamed to see that I had left Joyce all the entertaining of Miss Hoad to do in the mean time. For the captain had not paid so much attention to Joyce on that day as on most others; I suppose he thought it was more discreet not to do so before strangers.

Both our lady visitors had left, however, by half-past five o'clock, and Captain Forrester stood on the garden terrace now with Joyce alone, while I had returned to the darning of the family socks. It was close upon sunset, and they were looking at the lilacs that were beginning to swell in the bud. Joyce wore a lilac gown herself, I remember. The captain had once admired it, and I had noticed that she had put it on very often since then.

I watched them from the parlor window where I sat with my work. For the first time I was half frightened at what I had done. I wondered what this romance was like that I had woven for Joyce. I felt that she was gliding away out of my ken, into an unknown world where I had driven her, and where I could not now follow her. Was it all happiness in that world?

Although the light was fading, and I wanted it all for my work, I moved away from the window-seat farther into the room. It seemed indelicate to watch them; although, indeed, they were only standing there side by side quietly, and what they were saying to one another I could not have heard if I had wished to do so. But it was my doing that they were alone at all. Joyce had stockings to darn too, but I had suggested that the parlor posy wanted freshening, and that there were some primroses out on the cliff.

Mother was out; she had gone to assist at the arrival of a new member of the population, and such an event always interested her so profoundly that she forgot other things for the moment. Such an opportunity might not occur again for a long time, and I was not going to miss it—otherwise those two had not been alone together before. At least not to my knowledge.

Once Joyce had gone out into the village marketing by herself, and when she had come home she had run straight up into her room instead of coming into the parlor. I had gone up to her after a little while, as she did not come down, and had found her sitting by the window with her things still on, looking out to the sea with a half-troubled expression on her face. I had asked her what was the matter, and she had smiled and said, "Nothing at all," and I had believed her.