‘Then why say anything at all, my dear?’ the Colonel said.
‘Why know anybody at all, you mean? As if we could avoid explaining a thing which is a very strange thing, however you take it! Unless you have anything better to suggest, that is what I shall say. Brought up by some old relations in Scotland—you can say her mother’s relations if you please; but that we felt it was not right to leave her there any longer, now we are quite settled and she is grown up. Don’t contradict me just when I am in the middle of my story, Henry. Back me up about the relations—unless you have anything better to suggest.’
Colonel Hayward, however, had nothing to suggest, though he was much embarrassed by having a story to tell. ‘I’ll forget what it is you want me to say—or I’ll go too far—or I’ll—make a muddle of it one way or other,’ he said. ‘I shall feel as if there was something wrong about it, Elizabeth: and there is nothing wrong—nothing, nothing! all the time.’
‘Go to bed,’ said Mrs. Hayward; ‘you are too tired to begin to think at this hour. You know the railway always upsets you. Go to bed, my dear—go to bed.’
‘Well, perhaps it will be the best thing,’ the Colonel said.
They both got up next morning with one pleasant thought in their minds, that of dazzling Joyce. It took away the line even from Mrs. Hayward’s brow. It was pleasant to anticipate the astonishment, the admiration, the deep impression which all these unaccustomed splendours would make. Poor girl! it would be almost too much for her; and they both wondered what she would say—whether she would break down altogether in amazement and rapture—whether it would be by words or tears that she would show her sense of this wonderful change in her life.
Alas! Joyce had awoke with a pang of disappointment almost as keen as that which seized her when she was first told that Colonel Hayward was her father. She woke in a pretty room all dainty and fresh, with pretty paper, pretty furniture, everything that was most suitable and becoming for the character and dimensions of the place; and she hurried to the window and looked out eagerly upon the pretty English lawn so trim and well cared for, the trees that formed two long lines down to the river, shutting it out from other enclosures on either side, the brilliant flower-beds near the house, the clustering climbers that surrounded her window. And the cottage girl felt her high-vaulting thoughts go down, down, with a disappointment which made her giddy. Was ever anything so foolish, so wicked, so thankless? From the little garret in the cottage to this room filled with convenient and pretty things, of some of which she did not even understand the use—from the village street of Bellendean, seen through the open door or greenish bad glass of the cottage windows, to this warm luxurious landscape, and the silver Thames, and the noble trees! And yet Joyce was disappointed beyond what words could say.
She had no knowledge of this limited comfortable luxurious littleness; all that she knew was the cottage life—and Bellendean. There were, to be sure, the farmers’ houses, and the manse; but neither of these types resembled this, nor was either consistent with the image of Colonel Hayward, the Captain’s colonel, the ‘distinguished soldier’ with whose name Joyce had begun to flatter herself everybody was acquainted. She stood half dressed and gazed out upon the long but confined stretch of lawn, and the low gable which was within sight from the window, with dismay. A chill struck to her heart. She thought of Bellendean, not half so daintily cared for as this little demesne, with its groups of great trees, its wide stretches of park, its careless size and greatness. Poor Joyce! had she been the minister’s daughter at the manse, she might have been dazzled and delighted, as was expected from her. But she understood nothing of this. She knew the poor and their ways, and she knew the great people—the great houses and big parks, the cottages with a but and a ben and a little kailyard. The one was all-familiar to her—the other was her ideal, the natural alternative of poverty: but this she knew nothing about—nothing at all.
She did not understand it. The toil and care which made that lawn like velvet, perfect, without a weed, elastic, springing under the foot, soft as moss, and green as constant waterings and mowings could make it, was totally lost upon Joyce. She saw the two lines of trees and flowering shrubs, elaborately masking all more arbitrary lines of limitation on each side, shutting it off—and the sight of those green bonds made her heart turn back upon herself. Her father had recovered in her mind the greatness necessary for her ideal: he was a distinguished soldier—what could be better? He was finer in his fame (she said to herself) than if he had been a prince or a duke. But his house! She retired from her window and covered her face with her hands, and went back into the secret citadel of herself with a dismayed heart. She had never calculated upon this. To be just one among a crowd, to be nobody in particular, to have suffered this convulsion in her life and rending asunder of her being, for nothing—to be nobody. And all the time these two good people were forestalling each other in their anticipations, making pictures to themselves of Joyce’s transport and delight!
How she got through the ordeal will be best seen in the long letters which she wrote that evening to her old home.