And then she told him Mirza’s vision, with the warm natural eloquence of her inexperience and profound conviction that literature was the one deathless and universal influence. The Colonel was greatly pleased with it, and received it as the most original of allegories. ‘It’s wonderful,’ he said, ‘what imagination these Eastern chaps have, Joyce. They carry it too far, you know, calling you the emperor’s brother, the flower of all the warriors of the West, and that sort of thing, which is nonsense, and never after the first time takes in the veriest Johnny Raw of a young ensign. Well, but your old woman was very right, my dear. If I were to tell you about all the fellows that started in life with me—such a lot of them, Joyce; as cheery a set—not so clever, perhaps, as the new men nowadays, but up to anything—it’s very like that old humbug’s bridge, which, between you and me, never existed, you know—you may be quite sure of that.’
Joyce held her breath when she heard the beloved Addison called an old humbug, but reflected that the Colonel did not mean it, and made no remark.
‘It is very like that,’ he continued musingly. ‘One doesn’t even notice at the time—but when you look back. There was Jack Hunter went almost as soon as we landed: such a nice fellow—I seem to hear his laugh now, though I haven’t so much as thought upon him for forty years,—dropped, you know, without ever hearing a shot fired, with the laugh in his mouth, so to speak. And Jim Jenkinson, the first time we were under fire, in a bit of a skirmish for no use. His brother, though—by George! he hasn’t dropped at all; for here he comes, as tough an old parson as ever lived, Joyce. Excuse the exclamation, my dear. It slips out, though I hate swearing as much as you can do. We’ll have to stop and speak to Canon Jenkinson. I think, on the whole, rather than grow into such a pursy parson, I’d rather have dropped like poor Jim.’
Colonel Hayward directed his daughter’s attention to a large clergyman, who was walking along on the other side of the road. The Colonel had the contempt of all slim men for all fat ones; and Joyce, too, being imaginative and young, looked with sympathetic disapproval at the rotundity which was approaching. Canon Jenkinson was more than a fat man—he was a fat clergyman. His black waistcoat was tightly, but with many wrinkles, strained across a protuberance which is often anything but amusing to the unfortunate individual who has to carry it, but which invariably arouses the smiles of unfeeling spectators; the long lapels of his black coat swung on either side as he moved quickly with a step very light for such a weight—swinging, too, a neatly rolled umbrella, which he carried horizontally like a balance to keep his arm extended to its full length. When he saw Colonel Hayward he crossed the road towards him, with a larger swing still of his great person altogether. ‘Halloa, Hayward!’ he said, in a big, rolling, bass voice.
‘Well, Canon; I am glad to see you have come back.’
‘And what is this you have been about in my absence, my good fellow,—increasing and multiplying at a time of life when I should have thought you beyond all such vanities? Is this the young lady? As a very old friend of your father’s, Miss Hayward, and as he doesn’t say a word to help us, I must introduce myself.’
He held out a large hand in which Joyce’s timid one was for a moment buried, and then he said, ‘You’ve hidden her away a long time, Hayward, and kept her dark; but I’ve always remarked of you that when you did produce a thing at the last, it was worth the trouble. My wife told me you had sprung a family upon us. No story was ever diminished by being retold.’
‘No, no, my daughter only—Joyce, who has been brought up by—her mother’s relations—in Scotland.’ The Colonel had learned his lesson, but he said it with a little hesitation and faltering.
‘Oh!’ said the clergyman, and then he added in an undertone, ‘Your first poor wife, I suppose?’
The Colonel replied only by a nod, while Joyce stood embarrassed and half indignant. She was deeply vexed by the interrogatory of which she was the subject, and still more by her father’s look and tone. For the poor Colonel was the last person in the world to be trusted with the utterance of a fiction, and his looks contradicted the words which he managed to say.