‘My dearest old Granny, my own real true Mother—I wonder how you are, and how the day has passed, and how grandfather is, and even the cat, and everything at home. Oh what a thing it is to go away from your home, to be taken from the true place you belong to! You will never know how I felt when it all melted away into the sky, and Bellendean was a thing I could see no more. Oh my bonnie little Bellendean, where I’ve lived all my life, and the old ash-tree, and the rose-bushes, and my garret-window where I could see the Firth, and our kindly table where we ate our porridge and where I could see you! O Granny, my own Granny, that’s all gone away into the skies, and the place that has known me knows me no more: and here I am in a strange place, and I cannot tell whether I’m Joyce still, or if I’m like the woman in the old song, “and this is no’ me.”
‘Dear Granny, the journey was well enough: it was the best of all. I got a paper full of pictures (the Graphic, you know it), and they just talked their own talks, and did not ask me much: and then the country span along past the carriage-window, towns and castles, and rivers, and fields of corn, and all the people going about their business and knowing nothing at all of a poor lassie carried quick, quick away from her home. I pictured to myself that I might be going away for a governess to make some money for my grandfather and you—but that would not have been so bad, for I would have gone back again when I got the money: and then I tried to think I might be going to take care of somebody, perhaps a brother I might have had that was ill, and that you would be anxious at home—very anxious—but not like the present: for he would have begun to get better as soon as I was there to nurse him, and every day the time would have come nearer for taking him home. And I tried a great many other things, but none was bad enough—till I just came back to the truth, that here I was flying far away to a new life and a new name, and to try and be content and live with new people that I never saw, and leave all my own behind. Oh, Granny, I am ungrateful to say this, for they’re very good to me, and my father is kind and sweet and a real true gentleman: and would be that, as grandfather is, if he were a ploughman like grandfather: and what could you say more if you were Shakespeare’s self and had all the words in the world at your command?
‘We stopped in London, but I could not see at all what like it was, except just hundreds of railway lines all running into each other, and trains running this way and that way as if they were mad—but never any harm seemed to be done, so far as I could see: and then we took another train, and, after a little while, came here. To tell you about it is very difficult, for it is so different from anything that ever was before. Do you remember, Granny, the place where Argyle took Jeanie Deans after she had spoken to the Queen? where she said it would be fine feeding for the cows, and he just laughed—for it was the finest view and the most beautiful landscape, with the Thames running between green banks and big beautiful trees, and boats upon the river, and the woods all like billows of green leaves upon the brae? You will cry out when I tell you that this is here, and that the house is on that very brae, and that I’m looking out over the river, and see it running into the mist and the distance, going away north—or rather coming down from the north—where my heart can follow, but farther, farther away. And it is a very beautiful landscape: you never saw anything to compare to it; but oh, Granny, I never knew so well before what Sir Walter is and how he knew the hearts of men, for I’m always thinking what Jeanie said, “I like just as well to look at the craigs o’ Arthur Seat, and the sea coming in ayont them.” For me, I think of Bellendean and the Firth, and the hills drawing close round Queen Margaret’s Hope; but chiefly because you are there, Granny, and all I care for most.
‘I will tell you one thing: my father’s house is not, as we were fond to think, like Bellendean. The houses here are not great houses like that. I think they wonder I am not an enthusiast, as Mrs. Bellendean always said I was, for the things they have here. All the policy,[A] and everything in the house, is taken care of—as you used to take care of me. I can’t think of any other image. They are always at them. Mrs. Hayward puts on the things upon the chairs and the tables with her own hands. The things I mean are pieces of beautiful silk, sometimes woven in flowers like Mrs. Bellendean’s grandest gown, sometimes all worked with the needle as they do in India, fine, fine. I would like to copy some of them: but what would be the use? for they have them all from India itself, and what I did would be but an imitation. I am afraid to sit down upon the chairs for fear there should be some dust upon my gown, and I think I ought to take off my shoes before I go upon the carpet. You would like to go round and round as if you were in a collection, and look at everything. It will sometimes be ivory carving, and sometimes china that is very old and precious, and sometimes embroidery work, and sometimes silk with gold and silver woven in. And what you will laugh at, Granny, Mrs. Hayward has plates hung up instead of pictures—china plates like what you eat your dinner from, only painted in beautiful colours—and an ashet[B] she has which is blue, and very like what we have at home. All these things are very pretty—very pretty: but not to me like a room to live in. Of the three—this house, and Bellendean, and our own little housie at home—I would rather, of course, have Bellendean, I will not deny it, Granny; but next I would rather have our own little place, with my table at the back window, and you aye moving about whatever there was to do. They are more natural; but I try to look delighted with everything, for to Mrs. Hayward it is the apple of her eye.
‘She has never had any children.
‘My father is just as fond of his policy and his gardens—(but it’s too little for a policy, and it’s more than a garden). The gardeners are never done. They are mowing, or they are watering, or they are sweeping, or they are weeding, all the long day. And it’s all very bonnie—very bonnie—grass that is like velvet, and rose-bushes not like our roses at home, but upon a long stalk, what they call standards, and trees and flowers of kinds that I cannot name. I will find out about them and I will tell you after. But oh, Granny, the grand trees are like a hedge to a field; they are separating us from the garden next door. It is very, very strange—you could not think how strange—to be in a fine place that is not a place at all, but just a house with houses next door—not like Bellendean, oh, not like Bellendean—and not like any kind of dwelling I have seen, so pretty and so well kept, and yet neither one thing nor another, not poor like us—oh, far from that!—and yet not great. I am praising it all, and saying everything I can think—and indeed it’s very pretty, far finer than anything I ever saw: but I think she sees that I am not doing it from my heart. I wish I could; but oh, Granny dear, how can I think so much of any place that takes me away from my real home?
‘My dear, dear love to my grandfather, and tell him I never forget his bowed head going through the corn, as I saw him last when he did not see me. To think his good grey head should be bowed because of Joyce, that never got anything but good from him and you, all her life! Tell me what they are all saying, and who is to get the school, and if the minister was angry. What a good thing it was the vacation, and all the bairns away! You must not be unhappy about me, Granny, for I will do my best, and you can’t be very miserable when you do that; and perhaps I will get used to it in time.
‘Good night, and good night, and God be with us all, if not joy, as the song says.—Always your own and grandfather’s
‘Joyce.’
She wrote at the same time her first letter to Halliday, lingering with the pen in her hand as if unwilling to begin. She was a little excited by what she had just written, her outpouring of her heart to her foster-mother. And this was different. But at last she made the plunge. She dried her eyes, and gave herself a little shake together, as if to dismiss the lingering emotion, and began, ‘Dear Andrew’; but then came to another pause. What was in Joyce’s thoughts? There was a spot of ink on the page, an innocent little blot. She removed the sheet hastily from the other paper, and thrust it below the leaves of her blotting-book. Then she took a steel pen, instead of the quill with which she had been hurrying along the other sheets—a good hard, unemotional piece of iron, which might make the clean and exact writing which the schoolmaster loved—and began again: and this time a little demure mischief was in Joyce’s eyes:—