The Colonel was standing in the hall waiting for his ladies, pleased and proud, and somehow more happy than usual in the conviction that at last Elizabeth had thoroughly ‘taken to’ Joyce. The thorn among his roses had been the absence of sympathy between those two. He said to himself, twinkling his eyes to get rid of a little moisture, that no mother could be more anxious about a girl’s appearance than was his wife about Joyce. She gave those little pats and pinches to her dress as they came downstairs which happy girls sometimes resent, but which come only from the mother’s hand. Now the crown of his happiness had come, for Elizabeth certainly at last had taken to Joyce. How could she have stood out against her, the Colonel thought, looking with pride at his child; and yet even as this proud thought passed through his mind, a little accompanying chill came with it. For she was pale, she was very quiet. There was little expectation of pleasure, of conquest, of admiration in her. Perhaps she had always been too grave and a little frightened in society, though with gleams of brightness. She was very quiet to-night.
Mrs. Hayward did not remark this. She was herself much excited, tremulous with feeling both belligerent and tender. Joyce had become the heroine of the most agitating romance—a romance in which she herself was too much involved to be calm. That guilty secret made her heart flutter. What if it might be thought to be her fault? What if Joyce should think her dignity compromised? She was so strange a girl, so little moved by ordinary motives. Mrs. Hayward took a little comfort from the fact that Joyce was not at all suspicious, and would never think of the possibility of a plot to bring her lover to her side—which partially reassured her; but still there was a flutter at her heart.
They were late of entering the rectory, and the rooms were full. Everybody was there. Mrs. Jenkinson received her friends rarely, but when she did so, invited all ‘the best people.’ It was a little difficult to make the entrance which Mrs. Hayward had intended, so as to strike all objectors dumb. Mrs. Jenkinson, however, at the door of the room took Joyce in her arms in the sight of everybody with an unusual demonstration of delight. She held her at arm’s-length for a moment and looked at her with admiring criticism. ‘You are looking very nice—very nice indeed, my dear!’ she said very audibly, as if she had been a niece at least. There is nothing like being a partisan. She had never perceived Joyce’s beauty before, and that curious dignity—which came of the girl’s shyness, and ignorance of social rules, and anxiety not to put her father to shame. ‘I don’t think there is any one here to compare with her,’ she said to the Colonel, with a conviction which was dogmatic, and at once made a different opinion heresy.
Mrs. Sitwell, very ill at ease, had been hanging about the door until the Haywards appeared. She made an instant effort to secure Joyce’s attention. ‘Oh Joyce, let me speak to you—I have a great deal to say to you! she cried, in a shrill whisper through the curious crowd. Mrs. Hayward confronted the parson’s wife with an impulse of war which tingled through and through her, and raised her stature and brightened into fierce splendour her always bright eyes. ‘Perhaps I will do as well as Joyce,’ she said grimly, facing the traitor. What happened in that corner afterwards, we dare not pause to tell.
In the meantime the Canon appeared, with his big round black silk waistcoat, like a battering-ram cleaving the press before him, and held out his arm, bent to receive hers, almost over the heads of the wondering ladies. ‘Come and take a turn with me, Joyce,’ he cried, his large mellow voice rolling like the pervasive and melodious bass it was, making a sort of background to all the soprano chatter. He, too, paused to look at her when he had led her through the line of the new arrivals. ‘Yes,’ he said approvingly, ‘you are looking very well and handsome; but not as you used to do—I miss my little enemy. There’s neither war in your eye nor fun to-night. Come, Joyce, not so serious! We’ve met to enjoy ourselves. What’s that you are wearing on your breast? Bless my soul!’ The Canon paused, drawing a quick breath. ‘Who put this upon you? It’s your mother’s picture?’ He had turned so quickly to look at it, that her hand was disengaged from his arm. He took it in his own and held it while he gazed, and it became very evident to the circle about that the Canon was winking his eyes suspiciously as if to get rid of a little moisture there. ‘Poor little Joyce!’ he said. ‘Where did you find it? I remember her exactly like that; and you are exactly like it. You can never deny your parentage, my dear, as long as you wear that.’
It was not intended, nor in the programme; but the little surprise was very effectual. It collected a little crowd round the pair. The people who had been so deeply impressed by the imposture practised upon them in respect to Joyce, and even Lady St. Clair herself, were drawn into that circle by the strong inducement of something to see which is so potent in an evening party. It had not been in the programme, it had all the force of an accident. It brought spectators from all the corners of the room to see what it was. ‘The most extraordinary resemblance,’ people said. ‘A very pretty portrait; no one could have thought it was meant for anybody but Joyce Hayward; but it appears it is her mother.’ ‘With curls and an old-fashioned dress.’ ‘The dress we all wore in those days.’ ‘Then that story about her that she was a foundling, etc., etc.’ ‘It was a cruel bad story,’ cried Lady Thompson, crying with pleasure and kindness, and the heat of the room which upset her nerves. ‘I always knew it wasn’t true.’ Lady St. Clair and her little coterie retired into a corner, and there seemed to laugh and nod their heads among themselves, commenting on the scene; but their discomfiture was clear.
All this that was passing round her was uncomprehended by Joyce. She was aware neither of the gossip nor of her own triumph. She stood by the Canon’s side, confused with the flutter about her, the exclamations, the many looks that passed from her to the portrait, from the portrait to herself back again. The Canon had again drawn her hand within his arm, and she stood silent, patient, with a faint smile, pleased enough to find nothing more was required of her, leaning a little weight upon his fatherly arm, a slim white figure against his substantial bulk of black. Her other hand hung by her side amid the white folds of her dress. As she stood thus quietly, subdued, her attention not lively for anything, Joyce felt her hand suddenly taken and warmly, passionately pressed, with a touch which was most unlike the usual shaking of hands. There must have been something magnetic in it, for she started, and a sudden flood of hot colour poured over her from head to foot. She turned her head almost reluctantly yet quickly, and met, burning upon her in the heat of feeling long restrained, the eyes of Norman Bellendean.
CHAPTER XLV
‘Joyce! Joyce!’
That seemed all she understood of what he said. The Canon had disappeared, leaving them together—and other faces appeared and disappeared as through a hot mist, which opened to show them for a moment, then closed up again—everything seemed to say, Joyce, Joyce! Her name seemed to breathe about her in a hundred tones—in warning, in reproof, in astonishment, in low murmuring passion. They seemed to be all speaking to her, calling to her, together: Mrs. Bellendean and Mrs. Hayward and Andrew and her father, and a soft half-audible murmur from Greta. And then this voice close by in her ear—Joyce, Joyce! Would they but be silent! Could she but hear!