That seemed all she understood of what he said. The Canon had disappeared, leaving them together—and other faces appeared and disappeared as through a hot mist, which opened to show them for a moment, then closed up again—everything seemed to say, Joyce, Joyce! Her name seemed to breathe about her in a hundred tones—in warning, in reproof, in astonishment, in low murmuring passion. They seemed to be all speaking to her, calling to her, together: Mrs. Bellendean and Mrs. Hayward and Andrew and her father, and a soft half-audible murmur from Greta. And then this voice close by in her ear—Joyce, Joyce! Would they but be silent! Could she but hear!
Presently there seemed a movement in the scene, the figures around her streaming away, but always his voice in her ears saying she knew not what except her name. And after a while she found herself standing outside the rectory under a great blue vault of sky all tingling with stars. To her excited fancy they seemed to project out of the dark blueness above, as if to take part in this scene.
‘We are going to walk home,’ said Mrs. Hayward, ‘it is such a lovely night, and only a little way.’
‘And I’m going with you,’ said Captain Bellendean. ‘Yes, Colonel, I have plenty of time for the train.’
‘Well, perhaps yes,—enough, but not too much,—but we all go the same way.’
Something like this came to Joyce through the keen night air: and while the voices were still ringing, her arm was within his, and they were walking together as if it had been a dream.
‘Joyce: I don’t know if you hear me or not, but you make me no reply.’
Then all at once she seemed to come to herself and to con
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sciousness of all around her: the hard dry road which rang underfoot, the great vibrating stars above, intense with frost, with human interest (was it possible?), with something which had never been in them before. She was warmly cloaked and wrapped up, a fleecy scarf over her head, her arm held closely in his, his face bending towards her. It seemed to be her first moment of full consciousness since that time when all the ladies were gathering round her looking at the miniature on her breast.
‘Captain Bellendean, it is all very strange to me. I don’t understand what is happening,’ she said.
‘I thought it was so: the noise and the chatter of these people, and the agitation—for you were agitated, Joyce.’
‘I did not expect to see you. I was surprised to see you.’
‘I startled you—I know I did. Didn’t you hear that I had come and waited on Monday—waited and waited in vain? I do not know what you can have thought of me, Joyce. I should have come back months ago.’
She said nothing, and he thought he understood why, and it made him feel more deeply guilty than ever.
‘Some time when we are at our ease I will tell you everything and why I did not come; but now I am here, and I want your answer, Joyce, the answer you would not give me that summer evening. Don’t turn your head away. You have scarcely spoken to me to-night. Don’t punish me so for my delay. If I have been long of coming, it was not altogether my fault. And now that I am here, and we are together——’
‘I know,’ she said, ‘why you have not come back, Captain Bellendean; and your staying away was right, quite right, but not your coming. I heard of it, and I approved’—she made a little pause, and added fervently, using all her breath to say it—‘with all my heart!’
‘What do you mean?’ he cried. ‘Joyce, you are vexed and angry: perhaps you have reason; but not, not as you seem to think. How did you hear of it? and what did you hear?’
‘Captain Bellendean,’ she said again, ‘we have two different ways in this world. If I were to say what would please you, I would be mansworn. And even with that it might not please you long. And for you to speak as you are doing may be true; but it’s not well for either you or me.’
‘Joyce,’ he cried, ‘it is not natural to speak to me like that. Have you no feeling for me? Is it all a dream that has been passing in the summer, on the river, in the garden, the hours we have been together,—all that time was it nothing, did it mean
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nothing? It did to me. I ceased to think of anything but you—you swept away everything else, every other thought. If we had not been interrupted that day—would you have answered me as you are answering me now?’
She said nothing to this; and it was hard upon Joyce that while this momentous conversation was going on her arm was linked in his, she was close to him, her figure lost in his shadow, and all her resolution unable to keep from him the sensation of the heavy beating of her heart.
‘You must have felt something for me then?’ he said. ‘It is dark now and I cannot see you; but I saw your face then: Joyce, don’t be hard upon me. I have taken a long time to think, for there were many things involved, but here I am; and if I’ve been long of coming, it shows the more the force that’s brought me. Joyce, if you had not been the only woman for me I should not have been here.’
‘It is a mistake,’ she said—‘it is a mistake,’ scarcely able to command her voice; ‘there is another woman. And there is—another man! Oh, hold your peace, Captain Bellendean! you and me, we have nothing to do with each other. You would repent it all your life long. And I would be mansworn.’
‘Are you thinking of that man? Joyce, you never loved that man—loved him!—he is not fit to tie your shoes: he is not worthy to be named or thought of, or—— Joyce, throw me off if you like—break my heart—but don’t tell me you are going to make yourself miserable for the sake of a childish promise. No, no! You shall not do it. I’ll go if I must, but not to leave you to that fellow—— Joyce!’
His tone of alarm and indignation went through and through her; her heart seemed to melt, and sink down in softness and weakness and ineffable yielding. He was ready to put himself aside and think only of her; anxious only to save her, not thinking of himself. He held her arm close to his side, and his heart throbbed against it, not in heavy beatings like hers, but leaping, bounding, in all the force of passion. The woman in her was roused to wonder and awe of the superior excitement of the man—and that it should be for her, to save her. But then, with the wildest inconsistency, he began to pour out his love, forgetting that he had said she was to throw him off if she liked, as she too forgot and never saw the inconsistency, nor was aware that he had changed from that tone of generous determination to save her into the broken rapid flow of his own confessions and pleading. Joyce was altogether carried away by this warm and impassioned tide.
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She said not a word, but listened, drawn along upon his arm, close to him, swallowed up in his shadow, to the mingled sounds of his voice and his heart beating against her—a second voice, almost more potent than the first. She listened and felt the mingled sounds with a growing self-abandonment, a loss of all her powers of resistance, beginning at last to draw her own breath hard, to sob, with her heart in her throat, in sympathy rather than response. He was still pouring these words into her ear, still affecting all her pulses by that throbbing, when suddenly they arrived at the door of her father’s house. Joyce was altogether inarticulate, incapable of disengaging herself or raising her face to the light, and he made no attempt to let her go. She could hear him say, ‘Let me come in for a second,’ in a strange interruption to the other words, and felt herself hurried in swiftly upon his arm, through the hall where the others were standing, to the softly-lighted room. There they stood together one long quiet moment, their hearts beating together; and Joyce heard herself sob; and he took her into his arms and kissed her, with a little cry of triumph. ‘This time,’ he said, ‘there is no mistake! And there shall be none—never more.’
‘Why shouldn’t I go in, Elizabeth? My dear, I must tell Bellendean he must not think he has too much time—and this is the last train. Of course I know you could put him up if he would stay all night. But he has no clothes. A man may dine in his morning coat, but he cannot put on his dress clothes in the morning—eh? He will think it very queer to be left only with Joyce.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Henry, hold your tongue, and let them alone!’
‘Why, I should have thought you would be the first person to object to that,’ the Colonel said, bewildered. He gave himself up to Baker to be helped with his coat, while his wife hung about restlessly in a state of excitement, for which the Colonel saw no reason. The door of the drawing-room had been left slightly open, and no sound came from it as if the young people were talking. Young people, who have been together to an evening party generally talk and laugh over its humours. Colonel Hayward felt that Joyce was not entertaining the guest, and that it was his own duty to remind Bellendean of that imminent train. And why his wife should hold him back he could not divine. Presently, however, Captain Bellendean appeared radiant, looking exceedingly nervous and excited, with moisture in his eyes, and even on one cheek, to Colonel Hayward’s great astonishment. ‘I know,’ he
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