'Melville was in Italy,' and her interest in the country was expressed in these words. Melville's letter, written on hearing of his father's death, was sad enough. Weak natures like his, always find relief in trouble by many words, and give vent to grief by vain protestations of affection and of remorse.
Mrs. Falconer treasured the letter, and read it many times, and thought Joyce unfeeling in expressing so little sympathy with her brother. There could be no doubt that all his wilful disregard of his father's wishes started up before Melville, now that it was too late to atone for them, and for the time, as he said, "he was distracted with grief." But there was no word of a desire to redeem the past by coming to Fair Acres and doing his best to perform his duties there. Selfish people are not cured by trouble of their selfishness. It commonly happens that they are more selfish in their grief than in their joy, more self-absorbed by pain than pleasure.
While Melville could write of his distracted condition, of his love for his father, of his burning indignation against the wretch who had caused his death, and of his determination to have him brought to justice, Joyce was silent; only sometimes, when kneeling by Piers' bed, would she allow her grief full vent; only when alone in the seat under the fir trees would she cry out in the bitterness of her heart for the lost father who had been so dear to her.
And there were other causes of trouble, which she could scarcely confess to herself. Not another word had Gilbert Arundel written, not another sign had he made of remembrance. She knew now, as the time went on, that she loved him, and that, after all, she was nothing to him. How could she have been so foolish? How often she had laughed at Charlotte's fancied admirers, at her continual discovery that some one was in love with her, but was kept back by circumstances from declaring his devotion! For the minor canon was one of a long list of visionary admirers, and he had been followed by the pale-faced clergyman she had met at Barley Wood, about whom, during the few days Charlotte had spent at Fair Acres, she had talked, till Joyce grew weary of the theme.
"Such nonsense!" she had said. "Besides, no girl ought to acknowledge herself to be in love till she has had good reason given her. It is not nice; it is not womanly."
And as day by day passed, and night after night, when she leaned against the casement of her window, when the stars were throbbing and shining in the deep-blue of the winter's sky, she had to confess, with deep abasement of spirit, that she had been as weak as poor Charlotte, nay, weaker; for as Charlotte's heroes fell from their pedestals, or vanished into thin air like the mirage in the desert, she could always replace them, and pour forth her romantic soul in verses addressed to new objects, as if the old had never existed.
But Joyce told herself she must suffer the consequences of her weakness for ever and a day. No one could ever again be to her what Gilbert had been, in that first happy time of awakening love.
Joyce's pale cheeks and wistful eyes at last attracted her mother's notice. In these days she would have been taken to see a doctor, ordered change of air and scene, and put upon some régime as to food. But, except in cases of severe illness, people did not resort to doctors as they do now-a-days, and the nervous patients and chronic invalids, resigned themselves to unlimited home physic, and took their poor health as a matter of course.
"Joyce," Mrs. Falconer said, one day, early in February, when the season of Christmas they had all dreaded so much was past; "Joyce, I think it would do you good to spend a few days with Aunt Letitia at Wells."
Joyce tried to smile.