There was a sweep of energetic movement about this rapid little lady that pressed forward Janet’s reluctant feet. She took a step or two forward towards the stair. But there she paused again. ‘I’ve aye said to Peter we must keep a loose grip,’ she said. ‘And when she was only a wean it would have been nothing: but she’s come to be that between him and me, that I canna tell how we’re ever to part. I’ve never said it to her. Na. I’m no’ one to spoil a young cratur’ with praisin’ her. I’ve kept it before her, that if she had mair headpiece than the rest, it was nae credit of hers, but just her Maker that had made her sae. It’s no’ for that. It’s no because she’s an honour and a glory to them that have brought her up. Whiles the one that ye are proudest of is just the one that will rend your heart. But she’s that sweet—and that bonnie—bonnie in a’ her ways—ye canna help but see she’s a leddy born; but to take upon hersel’ because o’ that. Na, na. That shows ye dinna ken our J’yce. Oh, I aye said haud a loose grip!’ cried the old woman, with broken sobs interrupting her speech. ‘I’ve said it to my man a thoosan’ times and a thoosan’ to that; but it’s mair than I have done mysel’ at the hinder end.’
The stranger’s bright eyes grew dim. She put her hand on Janet’s arm. ‘I should like to cry too,’ she said—‘not like you, for love, but for pure contrariness, and spite, and malice, and all that’s wicked. Come and show me the letters. Perhaps we are just troubling ourselves in vain, both you and I——’
‘Na, na, it’s no’ in vain,’ said Janet, restraining herself with a vehement effort. ‘If it may be sae this time, it’ll no’ be sae anither time. We may just be thankful we have keepit her sae lang. I never looked for it, for my pairt. I’ll gang first, mem, though it’s no’ mainners, to show you the way. This is her cha’amer, my bonnie darling; no’ much of a place for a leddy like you to come in to, or for a leddy like her—God bless her!—to sleep in. But we gave her what we had. We could do nae mair—if ye were a queen ye could do nae mair. And she’s been as content all her bonnie days as if she was in the king’s palace. Oh, but she’s been content; singing about the house that it was a pleasure to hear her, and never thinking shame—never, never—of her auld granny, wherever she was. She has ca’ed me aye granny—it was mair natural; and nae slight upon the poor bonny bit thing that is dead and gone.’
Janet went on talking as she placed a chair for the visitor, and went forward to the rude little desk where Joyce kept her treasures. She talked on, finding a relief in it, a necessity for exertion. Mrs. Hayward looked round the little homely place, meanwhile, with a curiosity which was almost painful. It was a tiny little room with a sloping roof, furnished in the simplest way, though a white counterpane on the little bed, and the white covering of the little dressing-table in the window, gave an air of care and daintiness amid the simple surroundings. A few photographs of pictures were pinned against the wall. But the place of honour was given to two photographic groups framed, one representing a group of school children, the other a band of (Mrs. Hayward thought) very uncouth and clumsy young men. Janet, with a wave of her hand towards these, said— ‘Hersel’ and her lassies,’ and ‘Andrew and some of his freends.’ It seemed to the keen but agitated observer, in the formality of the heavy cluster of faces, as if all were equally commonplace and uninteresting. She sat down and watched, with an impatience which nothing but long practice could have kept within bounds, while Janet opened the desk which stood against the wall, and then a drawer in it, out of which at last, with trembling hands, she brought a little parcel, wrapped in a white handkerchief. Janet was as reluctant as her visitor was eager. She would fain have deferred the test, or put it aside altogether. Why had she kept these papers for her own undoing? She undid the handkerchief slowly. There fell out of it as she unfolded it several small articles, each done up in a little separate packet. ‘A’ her bit things that she had,’ Janet explained. ‘A locket round her neck, and a bit little watch that winna go, and the chain to it, and twa rings. I wanted Joyce to wear them, but she will wear nothing o’ the kind, no’ so much as a bit brooch. Maybe you will ken the rings if you see them,’ said Janet, always anxious to postpone the final question, putting down the larger packet, and picking up with shaking fingers, which dropped them two or three times before they were finally secured, the tiny parcel in which the ornaments were enclosed.
‘No, no,’ said Mrs. Hayward. ‘The letters are the only things. Show me the letters, I implore you, and don’t let us torture ourselves with suspense.’
‘Ae kind of torture is just as bad as another,’ said the old woman, undoing with great unsteadiness the cotton-wool in which the trinkets were enclosed. She held them out in the palm of her brown and work-scarred hand. A little ring of pearl and turquoise, made for a very slender finger, in a simple pattern, like a girl’s first ornament, and beside it another, equally small, a ruby set round with brilliants. The glimmer of the stones in the old woman’s tremulous hand, the presence of these fragile symbols of a life and history past, gave the spectator a shock of sympathetic pain almost in spite of herself. She put them away with a hurried gesture— ‘No, no; nothing but the letters. I never saw these before; I know nothing—nothing but the letters. Show me the letters.’
Janet looked at the trinkets and then at Mrs. Hayward, with a rising light of hope in her eyes. ‘Ye never saw them before? It will just be somebody else and no her ye was thinking of? That’s maist likely, that’s real likely——’ wrapping them up again slowly in their cotton-wool. Her fingers, unused to delicate uses, were more than ever awkward in their tremor. To put them back again was the business of several minutes, during which she went on: ‘You will not be heeding to see the other things? I have them here in her box, just as she left them—for Joyce would never hear of puttin’ on onything—and they’re auld-fashioned, nae doubt, poor things. You’ll no be heeding?—oh ay, the letters—I’m forgetting the letters. But, mem, if ye’ve nae knowledge of her bit rings and things, ye will get nothing out of the letters. There’s nae information in them. I’ve read them mysel’ till I could near say them off by heart, but head or tail of them I could mak’ nane. Here they are, any way. She’s made a kind of a pocket-book to put them in—a’ her ain work, and bonnie work it is—flowered with gold; I never kent where she got the gift o’t. Ye would think she could just do onything she turned her hand to. Ay, there they are.’
And with no longer any possible pretence for delay, she thrust a little velvet case into Mrs. Hayward’s hand—who between impatience and suspense was as much excited as herself. It was worked in gold thread with a runic cross, twisted with many knots and intertwinings, and executed with all the imperfections of an art as uninstructed as that of the early workers in stone who had wrought Joyce’s model. Inside, wrapped carefully in paper, were the two silent witnesses—the records of the tragedy, the evidence which would be conclusive. Mrs. Hayward’s hands trembled too as she came to this decisive point—they dropped out of her fingers into her lap. Her heart gave a leap of relief when her eye fell on the handwriting of the uppermost, which was unknown to her. The other was folded, nothing showing but the paper, yellow and worn at the edges with much perusal. In spite of herself, she took this up with a feeling of repugnance and dread—afraid of it, afraid to touch it, afraid to see—— what instinct told her must be there. She paused, holding it in her hand, and gave Janet a look. No words passed between them, but for the moment their hearts were one.
Mrs. Hayward opened the folded paper, then gave a low cry, and looked at Janet once more—and to both the women there was a moment during which the solid earth, and this little prosaic spot on it, seemed to go round and round.
‘It will be what you was looking for?’ said Janet at last. She had been full of lamentation and resistance before. She felt nothing now except the hand of fate. The other shook her head.