‘And somebody has put it into your head that the easy way out of it—the fairest way—is to sacrifice yourself? It was a woman that said that, and told you it was the a, b, c. I shouldn’t wonder if it was that old fool Cissy Marsham, it would be just like her. Now, Joyce listen to me——’
‘She is not a fool,’ said Joyce, turning her face to him again.
‘Don’t tell me! She’s worth a dozen of any of us, but she may be a fool for all that. Now listen to me, Joyce. I say no: do you hear? There’s no a, b, c, but plain right and wrong. As for self-sacrifice, in the majority of cases it’s a mere silly, idiotic, if not horrible, mistake. Generally it does good to nobody. You fling your own happiness away, and you don’t secure any one else’s. My dear girl, to consider other people first is in some cases not only uncalled for but wrong.’
Joyce had kept her eyes fixed upon his face. At this there came over hers a faint smile, and she softly shook her head.
‘She doesn’t believe me,’ said the Canon,—‘none of them do; on this point good women are all fools, and the better they are the greater fools they are. God bless my soul!—who made you your brother’s keeper? How do you know what’s best for him? Who gave you the right to humiliate him by sacrificing yourself to him—or her? what does it matter? it’s all the same, him or her. I tell you,’ cried the Canon, jumping up suddenly, walking round to the fireplace, and standing up against the glow of the fire, his large person rising like a mountain, flinging over Joyce a great shadow, ‘women like Cissy Marsham are a pest, they’re a plague in the place, with their a, b, c, and their creed for a woman. Nonsense, my dear! that’s all nonsense, my dear! What’s law for a man is law for a woman. There’s no other. Don’t break anybody’s heart if you can help it; but in the name of common-sense, go your own way and take what God gives you, and have the courage to be happy if He puts happiness into your hands!’ The Canon puffed out a hot breath of impatience, and shook himself in his easy large garments as if to settle them all into their places, shaking the house at the same time and making everything ring—‘whatever Cissy Marsham may say, the old fool, God bless her!’ he cried, with a laugh, throwing himself down again into a big easy-chair.
But Joyce made no reply. It is in the nature of an oracle to divine what is congenial to the nature of the devotee—to give a deliverance which, however confusing, will have something in it which will carry out its natural tendencies, and agree with his inner sense. But to Joyce this voice brought no such message. To be bidden to be happy was no part of her requirements. She did not understand what happiness in the abstract was. According to her austere peasant training, it was so far from being the object of life, that to seek it was an unworthy and undignified, even wrong thing. She had been happy all her life without knowing; but to look for happiness, to seek it, to make it the object of every exertion, was incompatible with all the rules of life which she knew. ‘Happy! you will just do your work and your duty, and be thankful for what the Lord sends ye,’ Janet Matheson would have said. What the Canon said was not very different: ‘Go your own way and take what God gives.’ But the meaning was different; oh, the meaning was different! Don’t break anybody’s heart if you can help it; but if you do, never mind—have the courage to be happy all the same. This oracle spoke too loudly, too plainly, with too distinct a note. It found no echo in her heart. It was not the guidance for which she craved.
The Canon saw perhaps that he had not been successful. He tried to draw her into conversation of a less momentous kind. ‘I hear you’ve had some visitors from your old home, Joyce. I fear they’ve been injudicious visitors, talking a great deal of nonsense; but I hope they brought you good news at least of your people—old people, weren’t they, that brought you up? I’m ready to give them a certificate of success in that line,’ the Canon added in his fine bass, which lent itself very tenderly to these paternal words, and with a pleasant laugh.
Joyce looked up at him with a startled glance. She had, indeed, put no question to Andrew as to the beloved old people. There had not been a word about them, or any other question of life—nothing but his claim, and her resistance yet acknowledgment, and all the confused miserable discussions. She seemed to fall into a slough of despond, the miry pit and the horrible clay of the Scriptures, when her heart went back, sick, to that visit. Ah! she thought, had that been all—had there been nothing but Andrew! But with the instinct of her natural reticence she only replied, ‘They are well—they always write that they are well.’
‘That’s good.’ Dr. Jenkinson meant to take advantage of the opportunity to ask further questions, to elicit, if he could, something of the true story upon which Mrs. Sitwell had built her romance; but when he looked at Joyce’s pale and musing face, and saw that the girl could scarcely withdraw herself from the consideration of her perplexity, whatever it was, to answer him, and that she had no attention to give to other matters, his heart smote him. He could not question her, force her out of herself, to satisfy his curiosity. He said nothing more for a whole minute; but the silence did not frighten Joyce, nor force her to speak. She sat lost in her own problem, to which he felt his energetic counsel had brought no light. The Canon had been impatient; he had thought it best to crush these foolish womanish thoughts on the threshold of her mind; but he had not succeeded. What he had said had been a disappointment and confusion only—no enlightenment to Joyce.
‘Come,’ he said, ‘we can’t sit silent like this and look at the fire. When you and me get together we want to talk, Joyce. Give me some of your opinions. You’re not satisfied with mine, I can see.’