Joyce felt herself quail as she looked into her father’s face. She read all that was in his at a glance. Colonel Hayward was quite ignorant of Halliday, quite unaccustomed to the kind of man, unprepared for this new claim; and yet his eyes expressed the same thoughts which were in hers. A little shiver of keen sympathetic feeling ran through her. She felt herself unable to say anything. She assented with a look in which, with horror at herself, she felt the shrinking, the reluctance to acknowledge the truth, the disinclination which she had never allowed even to herself up to this time. The Colonel looked from Joyce, standing with downcast eyes and that half-visible shrinking in every line of her figure and attitude, to the commonplace man with the smirk on his countenance: and breathed once more the habitual aspiration of his life, ‘Oh that Elizabeth were here!’ But then he remembered that Elizabeth had sent him away to work it out for himself.
‘We always knew,’ said Halliday, ‘that this day would come some time, and that her real origin would be known. I have looked forward to it, Cornel. I have always done my best to help her to prepare—for any position. I am not rich,’ he added, with demonstrative frankness; ‘but among people of high tone that’s but a secondary matter, and I know you’ll find we are true partners and mates, Joyce and myself, in every other way.’
‘Sir, I am very much confused with one discovery,’ said the Colonel, hesitating and tremulous. ‘I—I—can scarcely realise yet about my daughter. Let the other stand over a little—let it wait a little—till I have got accustomed—till I know how things are—till I——’
He looked at Joyce anxiously to help him out. But for the first time in her life Joyce failed in this emergency. She stood with her eyes cast down, slightly drawn back, keeping herself isolated by an instinctive movement. She had never been in such a strait before.
‘Oh,’ said Halliday, ‘I understand. I can enter into your feelings, Cornel; and I am not afraid to wait.’ He took Joyce’s hand, which hung by her side, and clasped it close. ‘Joyce,’ he said, ‘will speak for me; Joyce will see that I am not put off too long.’
A sudden heat like a flame seemed to envelop Joyce. She withdrew her hand quickly, yet almost stealthily, and turned upon her father—her father whom she had known only for a few hours, whose claims she had at first rejected—an appealing look. Then Joyce, too, remembered herself. Truth and honour stood by Halliday’s side, though he was not of their noble strain. The flame grew hotter and hotter, enveloping her, scorching her, turning from red to the white flames of devouring fire. She turned back to her betrothed lover, scarcely seeing through eyes dazzled by that glare, and put out her hand to him as if forced by some invisible power.
CHAPTER XVI
The little family party left Bellendean two days after. It was not expedient, they all felt, to linger long over the inevitable separation. Even old Janet was of this mind. ‘If it were done when ’tis done, then it were well it were done quickly.’ The sentiment of these words was in the old woman’s mind, though possibly she did not know them. Joyce was finally taken from her foster-parents when she left them for Bellendean on the evening before, half heart-broken, yet half ecstatic, not knowing how to subdue the extraordinary emotion and excitement that tingled to her very finger-points. She was going to dine at the table which represented everything that was splendid and refined to the village schoolmistress, to be waited on by the servants who thought themselves much superior to old Peter and Janet, to hear the talk, to make acquaintance with the habits of those whom she had looked up to all her life. The Bellendean carriage came for her, to bring her away not only from the cottage, but from all her past existence—from everything she had known. By Janet’s advice, or rather commands, Joyce had put on her one white dress, the soft muslin gown which she had sometimes worn on a summer Sunday, and in which the old people had always thought she looked like a princess. Peter sat by the open door of the cottage while these last preparations were being made. The anger of great wretchedness was blazing in the old man’s eyes. ‘What are you doing with that white dud?’ he said, giving her a glance askance out of his red eyes. ‘I aye said it was not fit for a decent lass out of my house. Mak’ her pit on a goon that’s like her place, no like thae lightheaded limmers.’ He waved his hand towards the east end of the village, where there lived an ambitious family with fine daughters. ‘Dod! I would tear it off her back.’
‘Haud your tongue,’ said his wife; ‘what good will it do you to fecht and warstle with Providence? The time’s come when we maun just submit. Na, na, never heed him, Joyce. The white’s far the best. And just you step into your carriage, my bonnie lady: it’s the way I’ve aye seen you going aff in my dreams. Peter, dinna sit there like a sulky bear. Give her a kiss and your blessing, and let her go.’
A laugh of hoarse derision burst from Peter’s lips. ‘I’m a bonnie man to kiss a grand lady! I never was ane for thae showings-off. If she maun go, she will hae to go, and there is an end o’t. Farewell to ye, Joyce!’