‘And suddenly, after one letter full of complaint and reproach, she wrote no more. He was in active service, and could not get home. It was not so easy then to come home on leave. He wrote again and again, and when he got no answer, employed people to find her out. I can’t tell you all the things that were done—everything, so far as he knew how to do it. I didn’t know him then. I daresay he wasted a great deal of money without getting hold of the right people. He never heard anything more of her, never a word, till the other day.’
‘Then that poor young creature was—— And Joyce—Joyce!—who is Joyce? Mrs. Hayward, do you mean really that Joyce——’
‘Joyce—was his first wife: and this girl—who has the same name,—I have not seen her, I don’t know her, I can express no feeling about her,—this young lady is my husband’s daughter, Mrs. Bellendean.’
‘Colonel Hayward’s daughter!’ Mrs. Bellendean sprang to her feet in her surprise and excitement. She threw up her hands in wonder and delight and sympathy, her eyes glittered and shone, a flush of feeling came over her. Any spectator who had seen the two ladies at this moment would have concluded naturally that it was Mrs. Bellendean who was the person chiefly concerned, while the little woman seated opposite to her was a somewhat cynical looker-on, to whom it was apparent that the warmth of feeling thus displayed was not quite genuine. The Colonel’s wife was moved by no enthusiasm. She sat rigid, motionless, except for that one foot, which continued to beat upon the carpet a little impatient measure of its own.
‘Oh,’ cried Mrs. Bellendean, ‘I always knew it! One may deceive one’s self about many people, but there was no possibility with Joyce. She was—she is—I never saw any one like her—quite, quite unprecedented in such a place as this: like nobody about her—a girl whom any one might be proud of—a girl who—oh yes, yes! you are right in calling her a young lady. She could be nothing less. I always knew it was so.’
‘She is my husband’s daughter,’ said Mrs. Hayward, without moving a muscle. She remained unaffected by her companion’s enthusiasm. She recognised it as part of the burden laid upon her that she should have to receive the outflowings of a rapture in which she had no share.
‘And what did Joyce say?’ asked the lady of Bellendean. ‘And poor old Janet! oh, it will not be good news to her. But what did Joyce say? I should like to have been there; and why, why did you not bring her up to the house with you? But I see,—oh yes, it was better, it was kinder to leave her a little with the old people. The poor old people, God help them! Oh, Mrs. Hayward, there is no unmixed good in this world. It will kill old Janet and her old husband. There’s no unmixed good.’
‘No,’ said Mrs. Hayward quietly. She sat like a little figure of stone, nothing moving in her, not a finger, not an eyelash,—nothing but the foot, still beating now and then a sort of broken measure upon the floor.
Mrs. Bellendean sat down again when she had exhausted her first excitement. There is nothing that chills one’s warmest feelings like the presence of a spectator who does not share one’s satisfaction. Mrs. Hayward would have been that proverbial wet blanket, if there had not been in the very stiffness of her spectator-ship signs of another and still more potent excitement of her own. Strong self-repression at the end comes to affect us more than any demonstration. Mrs. Bellendean was very quick, and perhaps felt it sooner than a less vivid intelligence might have done. She sat down, almost apologetically, and looked at her guest.
‘I am afraid,’ she said, faltering, ‘you are not so glad as I am. I hope it is not anything in Joyce. I hope—she has not displeased you. If she has, I am sure, oh, I am very sure she did not mean it. It must have been—some mistake.’