There could not be a better parson’s wife, Joyce acknowledged, strange though to her the type was. She petted and humoured the sick children as if she had been their mother. She sat by a bedridden woman and listened to a long rambling story about her illness and all its details, with every appearance of interest and unquestionable patience. And when the round was got through, she skipped out of the last house with the satisfaction of a child to have got its task over. ‘Now let’s have a run down to the river to see the boats, and then home to tea. You are going to stay with us for tea? I want a good fast nice walk to blow all the cobwebs out of my head.’
‘But you must be tired. And it must make your heart sore.’
‘You say that sore in such a pathetic way,’ said Mrs. Sitwell, laughing and mimicking Joyce with her soft, low-toned, Scotch voice—an action which Joyce only detected after a minute or two, and which made her flush with a troubled sense of being open to ridicule. The sensation of being laughed at was also a thing to which she was entirely unaccustomed. ‘But you can’t help them unless you see what they want,’ the parson’s wife went on. ‘And as half of them will cheat you if they can, and you must find out the truth from your own observation, not from what they tell you, you must simply put your heart in your pocket, and think nothing of its being sore. And as for being tired, I’m never tired, I have so many different things to do. If they were the same, I should die of it. We are going to have some fun to-night—we are going to have “Angels ever Bright and Fair” to meet you. Oh! don’t you know what I mean by “Angels ever Bright and Fair”? I mean Mr. Bright, our curate. He is the best little man in the world, and he is so pleased you agree with him, only putting it so much more nicely.’ Then the little mimic changed her tone, and was more Bright than Mr. Bright himself. ‘He shall sing that song of his for you, and he will try to make a little mild love to you, and it will all be great fun. But first let us go on to the bridge and have a look at the boats.’
CHAPTER XXVII
It was the afternoon of a brilliant summer day, and the Thames was full of water-parties going home, full of frolic and merriment, and pretty ladies in fine dresses, and men in flannels, in that négligé which Englishmen alone know how to make agreeable and pleasant to behold. The sight of all that pleasure had a pleasurable effect upon the parson’s wife, though she had no share in it. And the charm of the scene—the river, struck full by the level sunshine which made it blaze, the colour and movement of the continually passing boats, the more tranquil river-people about—fishermen in their punts, who had sat there all day long, and looked ’as steadfast as the scene,’ immovable like the trees that overhung the water—was delightful to Joyce, who had so soon acquired associations with that river, and to whom her two expeditions upon it were the most delightful of her life. She was leaning upon the bridge, looking over, watching the measured movement of the oars, as a party of small boats together swept down the stream, and thinking, not of them, but of her own water-party, and the strange enchantment in it—when she suddenly saw in one of the passing boats a figure which made her heart jump with sudden excitement. It was Captain Bellendean, who was standing up in the stern of the boat behind a gay party of ladies, steering, which was a difficult operation enough at that moment. He was too much absorbed in his occupation to look up, but Joyce had no difficulty in identifying him. His outline, his attitude, would have been enough for her quick eyes; his face was almost stern in the intentness with which he was surveying the river, guiding the deeply-laden boat through the dangers of that passage, amid a crowd of other boats, many of them manned by very unskilful boatmen,—and entirely unconscious of her observation.
The sight of him gave the sensitive girl a curious shock. She knew very well that his life was altogether apart from hers, that he must be engaged in many scenes and many pleasures with which she had nothing to do, and that the point at which their two lives came in contact at all was a very narrow one. She knew all this as well as it was possible to know such an evident matter of fact; and yet, somehow, this sudden proof of it, and sight of him passing her by, unconscious of her existence, in the society to which, and not to her, he belonged, had an effect upon Joyce altogether out of proportion to the easiness of the incident. Where had he been? Who were the people who were with him? Had it been as delightful to him as when he had made it a scene of enchantment and delight to her? She did not ask herself these questions. She only recognised in one swift moment that there he was in his own life, altogether unaware of, and unconcerned by, hers. The shock, the recognition, the instant identification of all these facts, were complete in a moment—the moment which it took the boat, propelled by four strong pairs of arms, to shoot within the shadow of the bridge—and no more.
‘Why! wasn’t that your friend, Captain Bellendean, standing up steering that big boat?’ Mrs. Sitwell said.
Joyce had a curious sensation as if she were standing quite alone, separate from all the world, and that this was some ‘airy tongue that syllables men’s names’ echoing in her ears. She heard herself murmur as if she too were but a voice, ‘Yes, I think so’—while the glowing river and the drooping trees, and all the gleams of mingled colour, melted and ran into each other confusedly like the mists of a dream.
‘I am sure it is. What a wonderful thing when one has all sorts of things to do, to watch those people who have nothing to do but amuse themselves! He has been philandering about with his ladies all day, and probably he will be out at half-a-dozen parties, or lounging in his club half the night—and the same thing to-morrow and to-morrow. Well, on the whole, you know I think it must be dull, and not half so good as our own hard-working life,’ Mrs. Sitwell said; but she sighed. Then turning upon Joyce with a sudden laugh— ‘I forgot you were one of the butterflies too.’
‘Oh no,’ said Joyce, ‘only twice’—thinking of those enchanted afternoons upon the water, and having only half emerged from the curious haze of enlightenment, of realisation, if such a paradox may be, which had surrounded her. She thought, but was not sure, that her companion laughed at this inconsequent reply. Only twice! How strange it was that these two frivolous water-parties—mere pleasure, meaning nothing—should have taken such a place in her life, more than all the hard work of which Mrs. Sitwell (with a sigh) asserted the superiority! The school, the labours in which Joyce had delighted, her aspirations, her Shakespeare class, had all melted away and left no trace; while the Thames with its pleasure-boats, the mingled voices of the rowers and their companions, the tinkle of the oars, the sunshine on the water, appeared to her like the only realities in the haze of her present life. They came back to her with the most astonishing distinctness when this sudden glimpse, which felt like a revelation, but was not—how could it be so?—rather the most ordinary circumstance, the most natural accident, befell her. It was at least a revelation to her; for it showed her how distinctly she remembered every incident, every detail, every word that had been spoken; how the Captain had handed her into the boat; how she had been placed near him, her father on the other side; how he had bent over his oar, speaking to her from time to time; how the others had called to him by the name of Stroke—which at first Joyce had supposed to be a playful nickname, not knowing what it meant—to mind his business, to take care what he was about. Joyce did not know why, but had a curious dazzled sense of his eyes upon her face, of his attention to her every movement, of the curious change in everything when she was drawn into the other boat on the way back, and the cloud that had come over his eyes. All these things were as a picture or a dream to her, not things she remembered as having been, but which seemed to go on and continue and be, like an enchanted world, which, having once come into existence, could never cease.