‘Sir,’ said Joyce, gasping a little to keep down her sobs, ‘I think that must have been my mother. I—think it must be. She begins in her letter to tell him—she calls him Henry—was that his name?’
The old Colonel made a noise in his throat which sounded like a sob too: he nodded his head in assent, as if he could not speak.
‘She begins to tell him—is he living still?’
This question had the strangest effect upon Colonel Hayward. He turned round upon her, steadying himself, looking her in the face, with momentary wonder and something like indignation: then the energy died out of him all at once, and he nodded his head again.
‘My father! then I have a father,’ said Joyce, with a voice as soft and tender as a dove’s. She was not now paying any attention to him or his looks, but was entirely absorbed in this new wonderful discovery of her own.
But he started with a sudden cry— ‘Good God!’ as if something new—something too astounding to understand—had flashed upon him. Her father! why, so it was!—so he was—— He had thought of no subject but this for days, and yet this point of view had not opened upon him. They had reached the head of the lane, and were now in the village street, turned towards the cottage in which Joyce had lived all her life, and near enough to see the light little figure of Mrs. Hayward standing at the door. This caught his attention, but not hers. For Joyce had plunged suddenly with a new impulse back into the enchanted country of her dreams. A father—and one who had done no wrong—who was not to blame—a living father! It was only when she turned to Colonel Hayward, after the first bound of exhilaration and breathless pleasure, to ask him, clasping her hands unconsciously, ‘Who is my father?’ that she saw the extraordinary commotion in his face. He was looking at her, and yet his eyes made quick voyages to and from his wife. The lines of his face had all melted into what Joyce felt to be the ‘kindest’ look she had ever met. And yet there was alarm and boundless anxiety in it. He looked as if he did not hear her question, but suddenly laid his hand upon hers, and gave it a strong momentary pressure. ‘I must know first. I must speak to my wife,’ he said incoherently. ‘God bless you!—I must ask Elizabeth. You must wait: I must speak to Elizabeth. But God bless you, my dear!’
He was already gone, hastening with long steps up the street. The thought passed through Joyce’s mind that this must have been a dear friend,—some one, perhaps, who had loved her mother: and a man with the tenderest heart. There was something in his ‘God bless you’ which seemed to fall upon her like the dew—a true blessing; the blessing of one who had always been her friend, though she had never known him. She did not hurry to follow him to satisfy herself, but went on quietly at her usual pace, looking at the old gentleman’s long swift steps, and thinking of a camel going over the ground. He was from the East, too; and he devoured the way, hastening to the little figure which had perceived and which was waiting for him. Joyce had the faculty of youth to remark all this, yet keep up her own thoughts at the same time. She saw old Janet standing at the door looking out, with the hem of her apron in her hand, which was her gesture when her mind was much occupied or troubled: and the little lady in the street standing waiting, and then, her own old friend, the Colonel, hurrying up, putting his arm within the lady’s, leading her away with his head bent over her. There was a certain amusement in it all, which floated on the surface of the great excitement and wonder and delight of the discovery she had made. A father; and a dear old friend, the kindest, the most sympathetic, who blessed her, and who had a right to bless her, having loved (she could not doubt it) her mother before her.
Joyce did not know what the next disclosure might be,—did not think for the moment that, whatever it was, it must change the whole tenor of her life. Nor did she think that there was still a doubt in it,—that it might yet come to nothing, as he had said. Oh no, it could not come to nothing; everything pieced in to the story. The doubt with which Janet had always chilled her, that a young creature disappearing so utterly, with no one to care for her, no one to inquire after her, must have had a story in which shame was involved—how completely was it dissipated and explained by this real tale! Oh, no shame! she had felt sure there could not be shame—nothing but the cruel distance, the fatal accident that had delayed the letter, those strange elements of uncertainty which mix in every mortal story, which (Joyce remembered from that reading which had hitherto been her life) the ancients called fate. And what could they be called but fate? If it had come in time that letter! as letters which mean nothing, which are of no consequence, come every day—and yet he had said the delay was nobody’s fault. Was it less fatal, less fateful than those incidents that lead towards the end of a tragedy in the poets? and this was a tragedy. Oh, how sad, how pitiful, to the Joyce of twenty years ago! but not to our Joyce, who suddenly found this July morning her vague dreams of youth, her fancies that had no foundation, coming true.
‘You’ve been a long time away,’ said Janet from the door. She had watched Joyce’s approach until they were within a few steps of each other, when she had suddenly withdrawn her eyes, and taking to examining the hem of her apron, which she laid down and pinched between her fingers, as if preparing it to be hemmed over again. The corners of Janet’s mouth were drawn down, and a line or two marked in her forehead, as when she was angry and about to scold her nursling. ‘I could wuss,’ she said, ‘that ye wouldna stravaig away in the mornin’ without a piece or onything to sustain ye, and maybe getting your death o’ cauld, sittin’ on the grass.’
‘It is the first day of the holidays, granny,’ said Joyce. She came in smiling, and put down her book, and going up to her faithful guardian, put an arm round her, and laid her cheek against hers. Caresses are rare in a Scotch peasant’s house. Janet half turned away her own wrinkled cheek. The intensity of the love within her rose into a heat which simulated wrath.