‘My dear,’ said Colonel Hayward, ‘perhaps there may be—dressmakers to think of—or something of that sort.’
‘I think you may trust me to look after that,’ said Mrs. Hayward, with a glance at Baker, who was listening with benignant interest. Joyce had a keen enough feminine sense to know that Baker was not to be taken into the confidence of the family; and accordingly she made no further interruption, but allowed the conversation to go on without attempting to take any part in it. She heard them discuss names which were without any meaning to her, and kept shyly, and, as she felt, stiffly still, endeavouring with all her might to look as if she knew nothing at all about it, as if it did not at all refer to her—which went sadly against her with her step-mother, who was eagerly on the outlook for indications of character, and to whom Joyce’s apparent indifference was an offence—though she would probably have been equally offended had the girl shown too much interest. When Baker left the room, Mrs. Hayward turned to her again.
‘The Colonel was quite right,’ she said; ‘though I didn’t wish to discuss it before the servants. You must want some dresses. You are very nice as you are for indoors, but there is a great deal of dress now worn at garden-parties. And what is called a simple toilet is just the most troublesome of all. For it has to be so fresh and so perfect, not a crumpled ribbon, not a fold out of order. You must go with me to choose some patterns.’
Joyce coloured high again. She felt offended, proud—and yet knew she had no right to be either. ‘If I may speak,’ she said, ‘I never thought of parties. I would perhaps not know—how to behave. Oh, if you will be so kind as never to mind me! I will stay at home.’
Colonel Hayward put out his hand with his tender smile, and patted hers where it touched the table. ‘You will behave prettier—than any of them,’ the old soldier said.
‘Oh, don’t put nonsense in the girl’s head, Henry!’ cried his wife with impatience. ‘You may very likely be wanting a little, Joyce. You may feel awkward: it would be quite natural. The only thing is, you must begin some time—and the best way is to get your awkwardness over as soon as possible. Afternoon parties are more informal than dances, and so forth. They don’t demand so much, and you could pass in the crowd.’
Though Joyce had been frightened at the idea of parties, and though it was her own suggestion that she would not know how to behave, she did not like this. It sent the blood coursing through her veins. To pass in a crowd—to be tolerated where much was not demanded! How different was this from the old dreams in which Lady Joyce had been supreme! But these were but dreams, and she was ashamed to have ever been so vain. She stole away, while they stood in the hall discussing this question, with a sense of humiliation unspeakable, and retreated so quickly that her disappearance was not remarked, back to the west room once more. She shut the door upon herself, and said half aloud in the silence and solitude, how good a thing it was that they had given her this room of her own in which she could take shelter, and be in nobody’s way: and then for want of anything else to do, she fell suddenly, without warning, into a long fit of crying, tears irrestrainable, silent, overwhelming, that seemed as if they would carry her away.
Poor Joyce felt that her fate was harder than she could bear—to be carried away from her homely state, in which she had been accustomed to something of the ideal eminence of her dreams, into this, which was supposed by everybody to be social elevation, and was humiliation, downfall—a fall into depths which she had never realised, which had never seemed possible for her. She cried like a child, feeling no power, nor indeed any wish, to stop crying, in a hopeless self-abandonment. Altogether, she was like a child, feeling herself lost, undervalued, neglected, and as if all the rest of the world were happy and in their natural places, while she was left here in a little room by herself all alone. And to add to the humiliation, Baker came in, soft, stepping like a large noiseless black cat, to put down the blinds, as his mistress had told him, and found her in the midst of that speechless torrent of weeping, unable to stop herself or to keep up appearances in any way. ‘Oh, I beg your pardon, Miss Hayward,’ Baker said, in subdued apology, shot with a glance of eager curiosity and inquisitiveness: for he wanted very much to know something about this daughter who had appeared so suddenly, and of whom no one had ever heard before. Joyce started up to her feet, and hurrying to the bookcase, took out all the books again in order to give herself a countenance. She turned her back upon him, but he could see very well the quivering of her shoulders, which all her pride and dismay at having betrayed herself could not stop.
This curious state of affairs continued for two or three days. Joyce withdrew to her room when the meals were over, at which she was nervously on the watch for anything that might be said concerning her and her mode of existence. It was the third or fourth day before anything was said. Then Mrs. Hayward stopped her as she was stealing away, and laid a hand upon her shoulder. ‘Joyce, wait for a moment; let me speak to you. I am not going to interfere with what you wish: but do you really like best to spend all your time alone?’
‘I thought,’ said Joyce, with a choking voice, for her heart had suddenly begun to thump so in her throat that she could scarcely hear,— ‘I thought—that I was to stay there: that perhaps you thought it best.’