Joyce opened her eager lips to reply, but, struck by a sudden sense of the uselessness of any explanation, closed them again—a movement not unnoticed by her companion.
‘I notice also,’ said Mrs. Hayward, ‘that you have a way of calling Mrs. Bellendean the Lady. That’s all very well if it’s one of the fantastic names that girls are so fond of nowadays—I mean, if other young people use it as well as you; but if it’s one of your terms of respect—— Remember, Joyce, that to go on speaking in that way is a—is a kind of insult to your father and to your own family, which is quite as good as Mrs. Bellendean’s.’
As good as Mrs. Bellendean’s!—her heart revolted against this claim. The old homage which she had given with youthful enthusiasm was not to Mrs. Bellendean’s position or her family. But how was Joyce to explain this to her judge, who did not look upon her or her romances with a favourable eye? And yet she could not but say a word in self-defence. ‘It was for kindness,’ she said,—‘for,’ hesitating with her Scotch shyness, ‘for love!’
‘For love!’ Mrs. Hayward echoed the word with a tone of opposition, and almost offence. ‘She is one of the women who seem to have the gift of attracting girls. I don’t know how they do it, for girls have always seemed to me the most uncertain, unappreciative——’ She sighed impatiently, then added in a softened tone, ‘If it’s only a sort of pet name, that’s different. But you must see that it is your duty to avoid everything that could seem to—to discredit your father. And we can’t explain the circumstances to everybody, and prove that it was not his fault. For my part,’ she cried, with a flash of quick feeling in her clear eyes, ‘I’d say anything or do anything rather than let it be supposed for a moment that the Colonel—had anything to be ashamed of in the whole course of his existence. He has not, and never had, whatever you may think. That’s what I call love,’ she cried, vehemently, with a sudden tear or two taking her by surprise.
Joyce turned towards her step-mother with a quick responsive look; but Mrs. Hayward was ashamed of her own emotion, and had turned away to conceal it, thus missing the eager overture of sympathy. She went on in another moment with a little laugh: ‘It shows we never should be sure of anything. If there was one thing more unlikely than another, I should have said it was the gossip of a Scotch village getting abroad here. I should have thought that nobody here had ever heard the name of Bellendean—when lo! it turns out that we are in a perfect wasp’s nest of relations and connections. Your Miss Greta, as you call her, a cousin, and the St. Clairs themselves visitors of the Bellendeans. I suppose before another week is over all Richmond will know the story. It is very vexatious, when I had planned to take you about everywhere, and do all sorts of things!’
She was called out of the room at this moment by some domestic requirement, and did not hear Joyce’s troubled murmur. ‘Was there anything, then, to think shame of?’ Joyce had said, her voice trembling, with the Scotch idiom which Mrs. Hayward disliked. She added to herself, ‘in me,’ with a wondering pang. Perhaps the girl had too high a conception of herself, which it was well to bring down; but such an operation is always a painful one. Though she had been brought up in a ploughman’s cottage, and occupied the humblest position, yet nothing had ever happened in her life to humiliate Joyce. She had been admired and praised, and placed upon a little pedestal from her earliest consciousness: and that any one should be ashamed of her struck her as something so incredible and extraordinary, that it took away her breath,—‘anything to think shame of—in me.’ She had no defence against such a sudden dart: it went through and through her, cutting to her heart. She rose up quickly, with a sensation intolerable—a quick and passionate impulse. To do what? She could not tell. To have the wings of a dove and fly away—but where? She stopped herself, clasping her hands together, holding herself fast that she might not be so unreasonable as to do it. The mother had done it, and what had come of it? To herself madness and death, and to her poor child this,—that the people to whom she belonged were ashamed of her—ashamed of Joyce! It seemed a thing impossible, not to be realised. She said it over to herself incredulously, making an effort to smile. Ashamed!—but no, no! Whatever there was to bear, it must be borne, even though those wings for which so many have sighed should be given to her: she must not fly, she must stay.
But Joyce had in this particular still something more hard to bear. A few days after the visit of the captain, Mrs. Bellendean came to Richmond, bringing with her Greta. The two ladies came with a purpose. They had been warned by Captain Bellendean that there were difficulties in the Colonel’s household, and that Joyce’s position was not of the happiest. How he had divined that much it would be difficult to say, for divination was not Norman’s forte. But for once his sympathy or interest had given insight to his eyes.
‘You should go and let them see that the poor girl has friends,’ he said.
‘I shall go,’ said Mrs. Bellendean, who was very sure that she must know better than Norman, ‘and make myself very agreeable to the step-mother. She is not a bad sort of woman. She will be pleased if we go and call at once, and I confess I shall do everything I know to make her like me and trust me: that will be the best way of serving Joyce.’ With this intent the ladies arrived and played their part very prettily. They were delighted with the house, the drawing-room, the lovely things, Indian and otherwise, admiring them with a comprehension and knowledge which Joyce had not possessed, and making Mrs. Hayward glow with gratification and modest pride. Joyce followed her beloved lady with her looks,—her usual and faithful admiration of everything Mrs. Bellendean said and did very slightly modified by surprise at this new aspect of her. They had not failed in any mark of affection to herself—nay, had startled her by the warmth of their greetings. Mrs. Bellendean had met her with outstretched arms and a kiss which confused Joyce with pleasure, and afterwards with—something else, which was not so agreeable. Joyce, indeed, was the one silent in the midst of the effusive cordiality and pleasantness of this meeting. She did not know how to respond or what to say. It was the first time she had met her friends under this new aspect. The night she had spent at Bellendean before leaving had been different. She was then in all the excitement of the great revolution in her life, and nothing seemed too extraordinary for that crisis; but Joyce had calmed down, she had returned to life’s ordinary, though with so amazing a difference—and her lady’s kiss and Greta’s eager outstretched arms overwhelmed her with doubts and questions which half blotted out the pleasure.
Finally, they strayed out upon the lawn, and down the shaded walk towards the river, as all visitors did. Joyce had made that little pilgrimage only in company with Captain Bellendean as yet; and there did not fail to pass through her mind a comparison which affected her in a way she did not understand. She knew him so much less than Greta, cared for him much less—and yet—— Joyce fled from the faint rising of an uncomprehended thought with a thrill of strange alarm, and turned to her friend, who was so sweet, the admired of all her youthful thoughts, her little paragon of prettiness and sweetness. Greta had twined her arm within her companion’s, and was looking tenderly into her face.