Only twice! but remaining always—so that she could go back at her pleasure, and float again upon the enchanted stream, and hear again the merry mingled voices, the one of deeper tone sounding through. She recognised with a strange confusion that this sudden, unexpected sight of Captain Bellendean steering another boat, with another crew, disturbed the previous image in her mind in some unexplainable way. It was like the sudden plunge of a stone into the midst of a still water full of reflections, breaking up the reflected images, spreading vague circles of confusion through the lovely unreal world that had been there. It was unreal altogether, everything, both that which had been before and that which now was.
Joyce walked back very soberly by Mrs. Sitwell’s side, vaguely listening to the lively strain of talk, which conveyed scarcely any idea to her mind—hearing, answering, knowing nothing, feeling as if the many-sided practical life in which her companion was so busy, was an unfortunate and troublesome unreality, breaking into experiences so far more vivid and true. She was glad to be rid of Mrs. Sitwell for a moment when they reached the house, where Joyce was to be entertained at tea.
While its mistress flew about seeing that all was ready, Joyce sat down, thankful to be alone, very happy to find silence and stillness round her, even in the little shabby sitting-room, with the faded ornamental desk and the mystery of the photographs at the other end. She wanted to think, to make it all out, to realise what had happened. What had happened! and yet nothing had happened at all. She had seen a boat floating down, with a score of others, passing under the bridge; and what was that to her or to any one? A boat passing, a water-party going down the river, and nothing more. But this was not how it appeared to Joyce: thinking is one thing and seeing another. Whatever she might say to herself, what she continued to see was the Captain standing up in the stern of the long boat, with the steerage-ropes in his vigorous hands, with that pretty group of ladies in the shadow of his erect figure,—another world, another life of which she knew nothing at all. Norman Bellendean had by no means neglected his new friends. Only two days before he had appeared in the afternoon, and had filled the place with that something which Joyce did not understand—that influence and personality which seemed to soften all tones and warm all tints, and charm the common day into miraculous brightness. She said to herself that this was society—that interchange of thoughts and feelings which had always appeared to her the most desirable thing in the world. That she should have found the charm in the sole possession of a cavalry officer—who was, it is true, at the same time, a country gentleman, and the lord and superior of the place which had been her early home, and in which everybody regarded him with an interest half feudal, half friendly—did not surprise her, though a cooler head might have found it a very surprising thing. Joyce believed that Mrs. Bellendean produced the same charmed atmosphere around her. They were the symbols of all higher intelligence and finer breeding, and she was not as yet in any way undeceived, nor suspected any other influence in the delightfulness of the Captain’s visits—a delight which had begun with the very first of them, and which had never failed. It was not, therefore, any kind of jealousy which had sprung up in her mind, even unconsciously. She did not suspect among the ladies in that boat some special one who might have all his best looks and words aside. Her mind was not at all in that conscious phase. She only realised with a curious consternation that he lived his life in another world—that the days when he was absent were to him the same as other days, though to her lost in mystery and the unknown. Where he spent them, with whom he was, mattered nothing. She was not even curious as to who his companions were. The wonder, the shock, consisted in the fact that his life had another side to her absolutely unknown.
In all this there was no pang of jealous love. She was unaware that there was love in it, or anything save wonder and disappointment, and a strange realisation of difference and separation. She did not know where he had been, or who were with him: he might have passed her very door—the other side of the hedge—and she would have been none the wiser. She knew him so well, and yet not at all. Something of the astonishment with which the primitive traveller recognises the existence of a hundred circles of human creatures altogether beyond his ken, who must have gone on living for all those years totally outside of his knowledge, filled her now. The thought affected her with fantastic pain, and yet she had not a word to say against it. Her heart made a claim all unconsciously upon those people who had first awakened its sympathies; and to pass him on the road, as it were, like this, he not even seeing her, unexpectant of her appearance, like two strangers, out of reach of even a passing salutation, was more strange, more overpowering, more enlightening, than anything, she thought, that had ever happened before.
The tea after this was bewildering and rather tedious to Joyce. She wanted to get away to think over her new discovery by herself, and instead she was compelled to share in an evening of lively wit and laughter, solidified by much parish talk. A churchwarden, who was no more than a local tradesman—though one of the ‘best people’—and much overawed by finding himself there—and good Miss Marsham, were of the party. Mrs. Sitwell’s voice ran through the whole like the motif of a piece of music, never lost sight of. ‘You must sing, Mr. Bright, as soon as you have recovered your voice a little after tea. Eating, we all know, is very bad for the voice: we will give a little time for tired nature to restore herself, and then the songster must be heard. Miss Hayward has never heard you, don’t you know.’
‘I am not very much to hear. Miss Hayward would not lose much if she remained in that state of deprivation.’
‘Oh, we don’t think so,—do we, Mr. Cosham? What would the choir do without him? By the way, that dear boy of yours is coming on famously. He must have a solo in the anthem on our Saint’s day. He is quite like a cherub in his white surplice. That is one thing the Canon envies us. He would give his little finger to have a surpliced choir—but they won’t let him! Though he is so tyrannical to us, he has to knock under to all the old women who sit upon him. They call it sitting under him, but I don’t. Do you, Mr. Cosham?’
‘Really, ma’am,’ said the churchwarden, with his mouth full, ‘you put it so funnily, one can’t help laughing;’ and with humility, putting up his hand to conceal it, he indulged in an apologetic roar.
‘Oh, let’s laugh a little—it does nobody any harm,’ said the parson’s wife. ‘What I should delight in would be to have a band for the festival: it might be amateur, you know; there are so many amateurs about the world that want nothing for it—that are too glad to be allowed to play.’
‘And oh, so badly,’ said Mr. Bright.