She got home at last in the dusk of the summer night, feeling as if the world were full of a babble of voices, and of jests, and of calculations and little intrigues, and attempts to do something unnamed by means of something else. Joyce had not been altogether unaware that all was not perfectly straightforward and true in the world before. She had been fully acquainted with the extraordinary little deceptions and stories made up by children to save themselves from punishment, or to procure some pleasure, or even for nothing at all—out of pleasure apparently in the mere invention; but these little falsities were of altogether a different kind, and her brain throbbed with the contact of so many unaccustomed trifles which were like the buzz of the flies in the air. The piquancy of mimicking an individual in his own presence, though she was not insensible to the fact, was strange to her serious soul: it helped to increase the queer unreality of this world in which she found herself, where there were droll little plays going on on all sides upon somebody’s weakness, from the silly correspondents of the Pictorial to the rich soap-boiler who was to be wheedled by praise of his house, and the humble churchwarden who was bound hand and foot in reverential servility by praise of his boy—and people who were to be brought to church by the attraction of a band as being better than not going at all. And what was it for? For the parsonage? Joyce was not so hard a critic as to believe this. She saw the good parson tired with his day’s work, and she had seen that kind mischievous little woman as good as an angel to the poor people. Their meaning at the bottom was good, and the parsonage only an incident in the strong desire they both had to make the district of St. Augustine’s as near perfection as possible, and chase all sorrow and sickness and trouble out of it, and set up a beautiful service, and steal the people’s hearts with angelic voices in the choir and celestial thrilling of violin-strings—to steal their hearts, but only for God, or for what they thought God,—for the Church at least. This part of it Joyce but faintly comprehended, yet more or less divined.
And then from the conception she dimly attained of this real and great motive, her mind came down again to the laughter and the mimicry and the photographs, and that perplexing utterance about an atmosphere deadened by Dissent. What a strange world it was! making good things look bad by dint of trying to get good out of evil! Joyce wondered whether it would not succeed better to reject the artifices, and try what simple means would do. And then having shaken off that coil, her mind suddenly returned with a spring to what was for herself the central event of this day—the Captain standing up in that boat among those unknown people, in that other world. Strange! and he was her friend—but yet belonged to her no more than the river itself flowing on its way, with so many other lawns to reflect besides that little bit of green which Joyce, watching the stream go by, had begun to think of as her own. But it was not hers, and neither was he. Bellendean had been hers, and her old people, and—— Joyce hurried her steps to get refuge in her father’s house from that shadow which began to start up in her path and look at her, and filled her with alarm—a shadow demure and serious, with no thought of other worlds or other influences strong enough to eclipse his own.
CHAPTER XXVIII
The next scene in which Joyce found herself which broke the ordinary routine of her life was the great garden-party at the soap-boiler’s, which was all that the poor Sitwells had got out of their supposed great demonstration and triumph of the school-feast. Sir Samuel Thompson lived in a large mansion on the hill overlooking the whole panorama of the Thames valley, with its winding river and happy woods—a scene enchanting enough to have satisfied any poet, and which this rich and comfortable person looked upon with much complacency, as in a manner belonging to himself, and deriving a certain importance from that fact. He was a man who was fond of great and costly things, and it seemed natural to him that his windows should command the best thing in the way of a view that was to be had near enough London to be valuable. And it gave him much satisfaction to gather around him all ‘the best people’ from miles round: it was pleasant thus to be able to prove the value of money, which was the thing that had made him great, and which he liked to glorify accordingly. ‘They all knock under to it in the end,’ he was fond of saying. ‘They think a deal of themselves and their families, and rank and all that, but money’s what draws them in the end.’ And Sir Sam was right. Some people came because his house was a show house, and his table the most luxurious of any far or near; and some because to see him swelling like a turkey-cock in the midst of his wealth was funny; and some by that indefinable attraction which wealth has, which brings the most rebellious to their knees: at all events, everybody came.
Sir Sam was, to use his own phraseology, the chief partner in his own concern. Nobody remarked Lady Thompson. She was not the leader of the expenditure and display, as the wife of a self-made man so often is. She was a homely stout little person, who did not love her grandeur—who would have been far happier in the housekeeper’s room. Even in the finest dresses—and she had very fine dresses—there was to understanding eyes the shadow of an apron, a sort of ghostly representation of a soft white comfortable lap to which a child might cling, where stockings to be darned might lie. She stood a step behind Sir Sam to receive their guests. He said, ‘How do you do? hope I see you well. Hope you’ve brought a large party—the more the merrier; there’s plenty of room for all;’ while she only shook hands with the visitors and beamed upon them. She went everywhere with her husband, but always in this subsidiary capacity. And Sir Sam was by no means reluctant to bestow the light of his countenance. It was not so difficult a thing to persuade him to appear at an afternoon party as the deluded Sitwells had supposed. He liked to show himself and his fat horses and his carriage, which was the last and newest and most comfortable that had ever been fashioned. But there he stopped. He took a cup of tea from any one; but if they thought to get anything more in return they were mistaken, and justly too,—for why should a millionaire’s good offices be purchased by a cup of tea? He had the right on his side.
This poor Mrs. Sitwell found when she made her anxious and at last desperate attempt to gain his ear. To waste his attentions upon the wife of the incumbent of St. Augustine’s did not in the least commend itself to Sir Sam. He was not aware that she was amusing, and could take off all his friends; and he thought with justice that she was not worthy to be selected out from that fine company only because she had asked him to her school-feast. In return for the cup of tea offered to him there—which he did not drink—he had asked her and her husband to his gorgeous house, and put it within their power to drink tea of the finest quality, coffee iced and otherwise, claret-cup or champagne-cup; and to eat ices of various kinds, cakes, fruit, grapes, which at that time of the year, had they been sold, would have been worth ever so much a pound. Sir Sam thought he had given the parson of St. Augustine’s and his wife a very ample equivalent for their cup of tea.
Joyce went to this great gathering in Mrs. Hayward’s train, as usual, following—with a silence and gravity which were gradually acquiring for her the character of a very dignified and somewhat proud young woman—her stepmother’s active steps. She knew a few people now, and silently accepted offered hands put out to her as she bowed with a smile and response to the greeting, but no more. The crowd was no longer a blank to her. She did not now feel as if left alone and among strangers when, in the course of Mrs. Hayward’s more brilliant career, she was left to take care of herself. On this occasion it was not long before she saw the portly Canon swinging down upon her, with the lapels of his long coat swinging too, on either side of the round and vast black silk waistcoat. She had been watching, with a disturbed amusement, the greetings made at the corner of a green alley between Mrs. Jenkinson and Mrs. Sitwell. They had been full of cordiality—the elder lady stooping to give the younger one a dab upon her cheek, which represented a kiss. ‘I could not think it was you,’ Mrs. Jenkinson said; ‘I have been watching you these ten minutes. How are you, and how are the dear children? I am very pleased to see you here. I did not know you knew the Thompsons.’
‘Oh yes; very well indeed,’ said the parson’s wife, with a beaming smile. ‘What a pretty party it is!’
‘A party cannot well fail to be pretty when it is given in such gardens as these; and with such a house behind it, flowing with wine and oil.’
‘You mean with ices and tea. It’s very fine, no doubt; but I like something humbler, that one can call one’s own, quite as well.’