The Canon had brought Joyce home. He had tucked her hand under his arm, and led her through the dark as carefully as her father would have done, talking much, but getting very little response. He looked like a mountain moving along in the gloom, or like a big ship with a slim little yacht in tow; and other wayfarers could hear his voice coming out in the mist, with sometimes a faint note of reply. The Canon was not talking to her of moral difficulties or cases of conscience, but of a party which was to take place at the rectory, and at which he wished her to look her best. ‘If you will do me a favour,’ he said, ‘you will put those questions all away, and put on the pretty looks with which you captivated me, Joyce. Eh? don’t you remember? it’s not so long ago; how you went and put yourself on the other side, and waved your flag in my face, you little—— But it was all in vain, my dear, for we fell in love with each other just the same.’
A smile came upon her face as she looked up at him through the fog and the faint lamplight that streamed in distinct rays across that solid atmosphere. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘You can’t deny it,’ said the Canon; ‘for my part, it was at first sight. Well, Joyce, to please me, and your father—though I don’t know that he has the same right—you will go back to that moment, and look your best. I want you to look very nice indeed—so does my wife. We mustn’t give the adversary occasion to blaspheme.’
‘But I have no adversary,’ said Joyce, ‘unless it were——’
‘Eh? I don’t doubt you have somewhere, as all of us have, somebody you’ve been too good to. And keep away from that little parson woman, Joyce. I’m a parson myself, you will say; but there are parsons and parsons. Is that some one leaving your house? and there is your father standing out in the night air without a hat; the most foolish thing he could do. You catch
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 cold without any warning, and then there’s no getting rid of it. Hey, Hayward! don’t shut the door upon us, please; I’ve brought you home your little girl.’
The Colonel shouted, ‘Why, Jenkinson, is it you?’—as we have seen—and stood in the doorway to greet his visitor. ‘Come in,’ he said, ‘come in out of the fog. If you had been coming in the opposite direction you’d have run into Bellendean. He has not been five minutes gone.’
‘I only wish we had run into him,’ said the Canon in his rolling bass; ‘it might have cleared up some things.’
‘What do you mean, Canon? He’s a nice fellow, but not particularly clever. Come in, and don’t stand out in the fog.’
‘Go in yourself, and don’t catch cold. I’ve done my duty now; I’ve brought you home, Joyce. Take care of her, Hayward,’ said the Canon, as he strode away, marching like a regiment, with his long coat swinging, and the black silk waistcoat charging the heavy air. Colonel Hayward withdrew within the shelter of the door, putting up his hand to his head, which was his vulnerable point.
‘Take care of her!’ he said; ‘my own girl! I should think I would take care of her. These parsons take a great deal upon them. They think they always know better than other people though they have neither chick nor child.’ The Colonel repeated these words to himself with a little chuckle, as he went back to his library to finish something he had been reading in the paper before dinner. The Canon looked very big and imposing, and took a great deal of authority upon himself, but he was wholly without experience in the point upon which he presumed to lecture his old friend. Take care of her—his own little girl! a pretty thing for a man to say who had never succeeded in securing anything of the kind for himself.
Joyce went into the drawing-room with her heart beating, sick and faint. She seemed to feel in the air that he had been there. There was something of him still about the room—the mark of his elbow on a cushion, the sensation of his breath. He had come after all. She wanted to stand where he had stood, to breathe the same air, and then—and then—to fly where she could never see him—where it should be impossible to be tempted to his destruction. No, no; and to break Greta’s heart. Her own throbbed quick but low. There had been a momentary spring, but only for a moment. No, no, not for his harm, and the breaking of Greta’s heart. His coming seemed to have precipitated and brought near what was so far off a little while ago. She was on the edge of the
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 precipice now—and there was something in the sense of the giddy vacancy before her that seemed to sweep and suck her towards the edge. She went in—and found Mrs. Hayward standing waiting for her in the middle of the room.
‘Where have you been, Joyce? where have you been?—to-day of all days! Captain Bellendean has been here——’
She said, ‘Yes, I heard,’ almost under her breath.
‘And why were you not here to meet him? I don’t suppose it was your fault. It could not be your fault. But why, why were you not here? It is like a bad fate.’
‘It would be rather a providence,’ said Joyce, in her subdued voice—‘for it’s better; oh, it’s better not. I am—glad—I wasn’t here.’
Mrs. Hayward grasped her hand with an impatient exasperation. ‘Glad—you weren’t here—glad to have driven him almost frantic—and me too!’
Joyce looked at her step-mother, wondering. She was so forlorn that any sympathetic tone, even though it was angry, caught her ear. And she felt the circumstances to be so desperate that she was no longer afraid. ‘You?—are you caring—anyway?’
‘Am I caring! You mean, do I care? Yes, I care. Joyce!’ cried Mrs. Hayward, gripping her hands tightly, then losing them with a little impatient gesture, as if she had flung them away, ‘you are a strange girl—you have never tried to make me love you. And I don’t know that I do. It was a great change to me, that had been everything to my husband, to have you a stranger brought in: and you never tried to make me care——’
‘I was bewildered,’ the girl said. ‘I was—like a creature astray——’
‘Very likely. I am not asking the cause; I am only telling you. But now there’s something got up that we must stand against. They’ve got to know about that man—and that you were only—a poor girl before. They are making a stand against you.’
Joyce stood up against the glow of the fire listening, yet only half roused. She was taller than Mrs. Hayward, and the energetic, almost impassioned little woman looked up at her pale face, and thought it like a face in a dream. It was abstracted, the eyes veiled, as if they were looking inward. And neither to have thus lost her lover’s visit, nor to be threatened with a conspiracy against her, awakened her out of the mist of her own thoughts. Mrs. Hayward put her hand on Joyce’s arm with the quick impatience of her nature— ‘Wake up,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what you
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 have in your mind: but give your attention to what I am saying. Wake up! it is of the greatest importance, if not to yourself, to your father and to me——’
‘Yes,’ said Joyce, with a little start; ‘I am hearing every word you say, and minding. Oh, don’t think I’ve a cold heart. I am only just all astray—since ever I came. I was a stranger, as you say. And I might learn better—if there was time.’
‘There is plenty of time,’ said Mrs. Hayward, with a little moisture in her eyes. ‘Men never see it—but it was a great trial for you and me. Yes, yes, for both of us. I always saw that. But we must make a stand now, and do it together. They say you’re not your father’s daughter, but a foundling—and they say you’ve got a man coming after you that made a disturbance—a low man. Don’t contradict me or put my temper up! He was not a low man, but quite respectable, I know that—but all the same a man to be put a stop to. Joyce! don’t you understand what a vexation it is that you were not here! He came with his heart in his mouth to lay everything at your feet. And the triumph it would have been for us all to have faced them, with you engaged to Norman Bellendean!’
A colour like the flash of a light passed over Joyce’s face. Her eyes filled suddenly with large hot tears. She shook her head, with a trembling going over her like the sudden shiver of ague. ‘No,’ she said, ‘no—never that; oh, never that!’
‘Why never that? Don’t be a fool, Joyce, don’t be a fool. Though he’s an excellent match, there’s nobody near, nobody anywhere that would suit you so well. You understand each other. For goodness’ sake,’ cried Mrs. Hayward, exasperated and anxious, ‘don’t spoil your life with any romantic nonsense! Why, even his people like you and seek you. Mrs. Bellendean——’
‘I must tell you the truth,’ said Joyce, ‘for oh, I am in a great strait, and I know not what to do. Mrs. Bellendean would rather I were dead than that. There is one he should marry that would break her heart—and there is one I should marry: that I will not do; but I will marry nobody nor think of anything that could hurt her—or him. No, not for all the world.’
Mrs. Hayward clapped her hands together in the wild impatience and rage which could not find utterance in mere words. ‘Oh, that was it!’ she cried. ‘I thought there was something treacherous in it. I thought she did not come for nothing, that woman! I never liked her, for all her show of kindness. I never put any faith in her. And she came to take advantage of your simplicity, you poor thing—you poor innocent thing!’ Elizabeth’s temper was
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 warm, but her heart no less. She caught Joyce suddenly in her arms, and gave her a quick kiss, which was like a soft little blow—and the girl felt that the cheek which touched hers was wet. But it was only a momentary touch, and Mrs. Hayward was half ashamed of her emotion. She gave an imperative grasp to Joyce’s arms as she let her go, and added with a little laugh, ‘But let us stand together, Joyce—you and me! and we’ll be too many for them. I don’t mind how strong they are—we’ll be too many for them yet—you and me!’
Colonel Hayward coming in at this moment, with his newspaper in his hand to read something aloud to his wife (who had seen it before breakfast), found them standing very close together, and heard the sound of his wife’s laugh, which sounded to him more like crying than laughing. And he knew that the sound meant a good deal of commotion in Elizabeth’s mind. He did not know what might have been going on; and while he was eager to interfere, his better angel kept him back by means of that prejudice against prying, which is a happy part of English training. Accordingly he did not come near, but pretended it was necessary to hold up his paper to the lamp. ‘My dear, I just wished to read you this little bit,’ he said, turning his shoulder to the pair. Mrs. Hayward could scarcely restrain the exclamation of impatience on her lips; but perhaps it was well that so exciting an interview should thus be brought to a simple and unconcerted end.
After this there followed two uneventful days—uneventful to the rest of the world; not quite so to Mrs. Hayward, who was employed in searching out all the ramifications of the social conspiracy against her husband and Joyce, with a warmth of defensive feeling and determination to support and vindicate what was her own side and her own belongings, which roused every amiable sentiment—and there were many—in her heart. She was kept in a subdued fever of expectation at the same time, looking almost every hour for the arrival of Norman Bellendean, who would not, she believed, keep to the invitation given him for Thursday, but might at any moment burst in upon them and set everything right. She did not believe that he would have the coolness to wait till that appointed time, and her devices for retaining Joyce within reach were manifold and sometimes very amusing, had there been any one with a mind free to observe the situation. Colonel Hayward, without having any reason given, was charged to be punctual in bringing her back from the morning walk at a certain hour—and Elizabeth herself took the direction of affairs in the afternoon, taking Joyce with her when she herself went out, and regulating a
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 succession of returns which made it impossible that any visitor could have very long to wait. It must be allowed that this extreme care was harassing to Joyce, unaccustomed to so numerous a round of little engagements, and who hitherto had been free to follow her own devices and think her own thoughts. These thoughts, it was true, could be carried on anywhere, and were as possible in the drawing-room under her step-mother’s eyes as when alone; but they were confused and weakened by the sense of some one near—by the interruption of questions which she had to answer, and remarks to which she was supposed to pay attention.
The gathering web of purpose and meaning was thus confused into a sort of cobweb maze, like the threads of a spider twisted with everything they encountered; and Joyce felt herself thus held in suspense, still with that sweep and suction in the air which betrayed the precipice close by—but rather with the sensation of one who lay upon the edge bound and helpless, perhaps to be swept over by the first gale, but in herself quiescent, capable of no movement—than of the despairing agent of her own fate, by whose action alone the end could be accomplished. She lay there still, listening for the hurricane that must sweep her away—not taking, as she must do, that tremendous step for herself. But the closene............