‘Dear Andrew—We arrived here last night, tired but not worn out, and came home at once to my father’s house. The journey was very interesting—to see so many places I had heard of, even if they only flew past the carriage-windows. Of course it was the train that flew, and not Durham and Newcastle and all the rest. You have been to London yourself, so you will not require me to tell you all I saw, and I was thinking a great deal on what I left behind, so that I did not see them with an easy heart, so as to get the good of them, as you would do.
‘I wonder if you have ever seen Richmond—it is a beautiful place: the Thames a quiet river, not like any I know; but I have seen so little. It is like a picture more than a river, and the trees all in waves of green, one line above another, rich and quiet, with no wind to blow them about. I thought upon the poem, “As idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean:” though there is neither ship nor ocean, but only the stream that scarcely seems to flow, and the little boats that scarcely seem to move—everything so warm and so still. My father’s house is called Rosebank, as you will see by the printing on the paper. It is rather a foolish name, but it was the name of the house before they came here. It is the most wonderful place I ever saw, so carefully kept and beautifully furnished. I never understood before what all the novels say now about furniture and the pretty things scattered about. There is a quantity of things in the drawing-room which I should have taken the children to an exhibition to see, and I should have had to read up a great deal to explain everything to them. But no one thinks of explaining: they are just lying about, and no one pays any attention to them here. My father takes a great interest in the gardens and the grounds, which are beautiful. And the best thing of all is the view of all the bits of the Thames, and the beautiful woods.
‘It is a great change, and it makes one feel very unsteady at first, and I scarcely realise what the life will be, but I must trust that everything will turn out well: and my father and Mrs. Hayward are very kind. I am to have a sitting-room to myself to do what I like in, and I am to be taken about to see everything. You will not expect me to tell you much more at present, for I don’t know much more, it being only the first day; but I thought you would like to hear at once. It is a great change. I wonder sometimes if I may not perhaps wake up to-morrow and find I am at home again and it is all a dream.
‘I hope you will go and see Granny, when you can, and cheer them a little. Grandfather is glad of a crack, you know. They will be lonely at first, being always used to me. I will be very thankful to you, dear Andrew, if you will see them when you can, and be very kind—but that, I am sure, you will be. When I think of them sitting alone, and nobody to come in and make them smile, it just breaks my heart.—Yours affectionately,
‘Joyce Hayward.’
Joyce Hayward—it was the first time she had signed her name. Her eyes were too full thinking of the old people to see how it looked, but when that lump had melted a little in her throat, and she had dried her eyes, turning hastily aside that no drop might fall upon the fair page and blot the nice and careful writing, Joyce looked at it, and again there came upon her face a faint little smile. Joyce Hayward—it did not look amiss. And it was a beautifully written letter, not a t but was crossed, not an i but was dotted. She had resisted all temptations to abridge the ‘affectionately.’ There it stood, fully written out in all its long syllables. That would please Andrew. When she had put up her letters, she rose from her seat and looked out once more, softly pushing aside the carefully drawn curtains, upon the landscape sleeping in the soft summer haze of starlight and night. All so still—no whisper of the sea near, no thrill of the north wind—a serene motionless stretch of lawn and river and shadowy trees. It was a lovely scene, but it saddened Joyce, who felt the soft dusk fill her soul and fold over all her life. And thus ended her first day in her father’s house.
CHAPTER XVIII
Joyce was sadly uncertain what to do or how to behave herself in her new home. She took possession of the room which was given to her as a sitting-room, with a confused sense that she was meant to remain there, which was half a relief and half a trouble to her. To live there all alone except when she was called to meals was dreadfully dreary, although it felt almost a pleasure for the first moment to be alone. She brought out her writing things, which were of a very humble description, and better suited to the back window in the cottage than to the pretty writing-table upon which she now arranged them,—a large old blotting-book, distended with the many exercises and school-papers it had been accustomed to hold, and a shabby rosewood desk, which she had got several years ago as the prize of one of her examinations. How shabby they looked, quite out of place, unfit to be brought into this beautiful house! Joyce paused a moment to wonder whether she herself was as much out of place in her brown frock, which, though it was made like Greta’s, and so simple and quiet that it could not be vulgar, was yet a dress very suitable for the schoolmistress. She brought down her few books, some of which were prizes too, and still more deplorable in their cheap gilding than the simply shabby ones. Nobody could say that the bindings were not vulgar, although it was Milton, and Wordsworth, and Coleridge, and the Lay of the Last Minstrel that were within. She made a row of them in the pretty bookshelves, and they looked like common people intruding into a fine house, as she herself was doing. Common people! Milton and Wordsworth! That showed how little was told by the outside; and Joyce was not without a proud consciousness swelling in her breast that she, too, in her brown frock, and with her village schoolmistress’s traditions, was not common or unworthy.
Her father had met her coming downstairs with her arms full of the books, and had stopped to take them from her with a shocked look, and insisted on carrying them down for her. ‘But why didn’t you ring for somebody to do it, my dear?’ he said. ‘They are not heavy,’ said Joyce; ‘they are no trouble,—and I always do things for myself.’ ‘But you must not here,’ Colonel Hayward said, putting them down on the table, and pausing a moment to brush off with his handkerchief the little stains of dust which they had left on his irreproachable coat. Joyce felt that little movement with another keen sensation of inappropriateness. It was not right, because she was unaccustomed to being served by others, that Colonel Hayward, a distinguished soldier, should get specks of dust on his coat. A hot blush enveloped her like a flame, while she stood looking at him, not knowing whether to say anything, whether to try to express the distress and bewilderment that filled her being, or if it would be better to be silent and mutely avoid such an occurrence again.
He looked up at her when he had brushed away the last speck, and smiled. ‘Books will gather dust,’ he said. ‘Don’t look as if you were to blame, my dear. But you must remember, Joyce, you are the young lady of the house, and everything in it is at your command.’ He patted her shoulder, with a very kind encouraging look, as he went away. It was a large assurance to give, and probably Mrs. Hayward would not have said quite so much; but it left Joyce in a state of indescribable emotion, her heart deeply touched, but her mind distracted with the impossibilities of her new position. How was she to know what to do? To avoid giving trouble, to save herself, was not the rule she could abide by when it ended in specking with dust the Colonel’s coat, and bringing him out of his own occupations to help her. Joyce sat down when she had arranged her books, and tried to thread her way through all this maze which bewildered her. She had nothing to do, and she thought she was intended to spend her life here, to sit alone and occupy herself. It was very kindly meant, she was sure, so as to leave her at her ease; and she was glad to have this refuge, not to be always in Mrs. Hayward’s way, sitting stiffly in the drawing-room waiting to be spoken to. Oh yes; she was glad to be here: yet she looked about the room with eyes a little forlorn.