Janet’s heart was very heavy; but there was no time for questions, and she saw that Joyce was little disposed to explain. ‘We’ll go with her to the station, and see her off,’ she said, taking her big shawl out of the aumrie. ‘I’m laith, laith to part with you, Joyce: but it would be nae kindness to make ye late, and they’ll be meeting you at the train.’
‘I must not be late,’ Joyce replied. She looked round with a faint smile, and tears were in her eyes, and her lips moved as if she was saying something. Janet’s heart was sore for her child. Why was she left to travel all alone in a wild and dark night like this? Why should she say nothing of her father, or of any one that was with her? Janet’s mind misgave her—she was full of fears: Joyce was ‘no hersel’. She was very loving, very tender, and smiled, and tried to look at ease; but she could not deceive the old woman whom love enlightened, who knew all her ways and her looks. There was something in her eyes which Janet did not know. She did not understand what it meant, but it meant trouble. There was trouble written all over Joyce. Her fond old guardian knew not what it was, only knew it was there.
The two old people went to the station with her through the windy, weeping night, saying little on either side. Joyce clasped her old grandmother’s arm tightly in hers, but scarcely spoke, and Peter stalked beside them, half exhilarated, half heart-broken—he did not know which. To have had her for a little was sweet, but then to see her go away. She clung to them, crying quietly under her veil, as they put her into a corner of a vacant carriage—not without a forlorn pride that it was first class—and wrapped her cloak round her. They had no fine phrases, but to smooth the folds of her dress, to tuck the cloak round her, was always some faint satisfaction. ‘I’ll write,’ she said, ’as soon as I can, but it may be long. You’ll not lose heart, only wait, wait, and I’ll write——’
‘Oh, my darlin’, we’ll wait—but, Joyce, where are you goin’, where are you goin’, that you speak like that?’
‘Good-bye, grandfather,—good-bye, granny, dear granny!’
Janet clutched Peter with a grasp that hurt even that old arm of his, all muscle and sinew. ‘Noo,’ she said, in an imperative whisper, ‘gang hame to your bed: I’m goin’ after her. Dinna say a word to me, but gang hame to you bed. I’ll come back the morn’s morning, or as soon as I can.’
‘Gaun after her! and what good will that do her?’ cried Peter in consternation.
‘At least, I’ll see her safe,’ said Janet, clambering into a third-class carriage. The train was almost in motion, and carried her off before her astonished husband could say another word. The old man stood bewildered, and looked after the train which carried them both from him. But he had that inexhaustible rural patience which makes so many things supportable. After a few minutes he went away, slowly shaking his head. ‘She has nae ticket,’ he said to himself, ‘and little money in her pooch, and what guid can she do in ony case?’ But after a while he obeyed Janet’s injunction and went slowly home.
It was hard work for Janet to keep sight of Joyce when they came to the great Edinburgh station: she was little accustomed to crowds—to be hustled and pushed about as a poor old woman getting out of a third-class carriage so often is: but fortunately her eyes had kept the long sight of youth, and she managed to trace the movements of her child. One thing was sure, that nobody was there to meet Joyce, not even a maid. The girl made her way by dark passages and corners to the place where another little train was starting for Leith, where Janet followed her breathless. It was very raw and cold, windy and gusty, the wind blowing about the light of the lamps, driving wild clouds across the sky, dashing rain from time to time against the carriage windows, and the atmosphere was dreary with a sense of the wilder darkness of the approaching sea. Presently they came to the port and to the quay, where a confused mass of vessels, made half visible by the flaring melancholy lights, lay together, with lamps swinging at their masts. The pavement was wet and slippery, the wind was keen and cold, and blew blasts of stinging rain like tears over her face as she toiled along. But she never lost sight of Joyce. The Firth was tumbling in dark waves, faintly visible in a liquid line, apparent at least so far that it was not solid earth, but something wilder, more dreadful, insecure—and it raved and dashed against the pier and the sides of the ships, sometimes sending up a leaping white vision of spray like something flying at your throat, and always a sound as of contending voices, the shout of oncoming, the long grinding drag of the withdrawal as wave followed wave. The boats moved and creaked at anchor, the lamps and dim masts and funnels rising and falling. There were gangways each with its little coloured smoky lamp, from one steamboat to another, lying ready to start, three or four deep against the pier. Janet saw the solitary figure which she had tracked so long pause, as if with a moment’s hesitation, at the first of these gangways, and she made a rush forward at the last after this long course, to grip her child by the dress, by whatever thing she could clutch and hold, and cry, ‘No, no; you’ll gang no further! oh, Joyce, my bairn, you’ll gang no further!’ But she slipped and fell, being exhausted with the long and weary walk, and, breathless with labour and fatigue, could get nothing out but a panting No, no, which had no meaning. When she got to her feet again the slim figure was gone. She thought she could trace it on the farthest point, standing upon the paddle-box of the steamer, and ever after believed that the speck of whiteness in the dark was Joyce’s face turned back towards home. That was the last she saw.
The old woman stood upon the pier for long after. She stood and watched while a few other passengers arrived, talking dolefully about the stormy night, and tried to take a little comfort thinking that perhaps ‘the Cornel’ might be among them, and Joyce after all have a protector and companions. There was one tall man, indeed, speaking ‘high English,’ whom Janet almost made up her mind, with an unspeakable lightening of her heart, must be ‘the Cornel.’ Her old eyes could not trace him through the maze of the steamboats to the one upon which she had kept a despairing watch: but fatigue and misery had by this time dimmed her faculties. Then that farthest boat, the one that held her child, with shouts and shrieks of steam, and lights wavering through the gloom, and every dreadful noise, got into motion, and went out upon the tumbling, stormy sea. Janet watched the light rising and sinking, the only thing visible, till that too disappeared in the darkness. And then all was quiet but the booming of the Firth against the piers, and the creek and jar of the other steamboats preparing to follow. She withdrew a little and leant against a post, and dried her eyes with a trembling hand. ‘Oh, my bairn! my bairn!’ she said to herself.