Janet had scarcely recovered the use of her tired limbs next morning and begun languidly to ‘redd up’ the cottage, with many anxious thoughts in her breast, when an unusual sound of masculine footsteps attracted her attention. She was in a very nervous, vigilant state, expecting she knew not what, although it had seemed as if everything had happened that could happen, now that Joyce had come—and gone so mysteriously: that she should come had always been a possibility before, but now was so no longer. The tramp of these imperative feet, not the slow tread of labouring men, attracted her anxious ear some distance off. She put away her brush and listened. The door stood open though the morning was cold, and a ray of pale and watery sunshine came in. Janet was afraid to look out, with an instant swift intuition and alarm lest somehow her child’s interest might be involved, and she could scarcely be said to be surprised when she saw the Captain, accompanied by an older grey-haired man whom she at once recognised as ‘the Cornel.’ ‘Eh, but I must be careful. She wasna with him after a’,’ said Janet to herself. She had been very tremulous and shaken with fatigue and anxiety, but she braced herself up in a moment and stood firmly on the defensive, whatever might be about to happen. The two gentlemen looked harassed and anxious. They came straight to the cottage door without any pause or hesitation. ‘Is Miss Joyce here?’ the Captain asked breathless, without even mainners to say good morning, as Janet remarked.
‘Na, Captain, she’s no here.’
‘My good woman,’ said the Colonel, breathless, too, ‘don’t be unkind, but tell us where my daughter is. We’ve come from London. I never denied your interest in her—never opposed her love for you. Bellendean will tell you. Let me see Joyce, for God’s sake!
{404}
’
‘Colonel,’ said Janet, with a little tremble, ‘you should see her if she was in my keeping without such a grand plea. But she’s no here. I thought till this moment she was with—her ain folk.’
‘Don’t try to deceive us,’ cried Captain Bellendean, ‘we have traced her here.’ He was very much agitated to have forgotten his ‘mainners’ in this wonderful way.
‘Track or no track,’ said Janet, ‘you’ll get no lies frae me. Yes, she’s been here. There’s the chair she sat upon only yestreen and late at nicht wi’ Peter and me.’
The Colonel came in and looked at the chair with the instinct of a simple mind. It seemed to throw a certain light upon Joyce’s disappearance. ‘Then where is she now?’ he said, with a sigh of impatience and disappointment. ‘Let me sit down, if you please, for all my strength seems to have gone out of me. Where is she now?’
‘That’s mair than I can tell,’ said Janet with the fervour of undeniable truth.
‘We are in great trouble,’ said Captain Bellendean. ‘She has gone away—in a mistake. Janet, you’re very fond of her, I know. She has been troubled about Halliday the schoolmaster, and—some one else. She has thought the best thing was to go away—and it’s the worst thing. It’s misery to everybody. I know you’re fond of her.’
‘Fond of her!’ said Janet. She said to herself that it was a bonnie question to be asked of her that would give her last drop of blood for Joyce. ‘Ay, ye may say I’m fond of her,’ she replied grimly.
‘And it is all a mistake. She’s taken up a mistaken idea. Halliday had no such claim upon her—nor had—any other. It was altogether a false fear. I would never—for pity’s sake, if you can tell us anything. You know me! She would never be forced to anything. She might have been sure of that,’ the Captain added hurriedly, with a flush of forlorn pride.
‘Eh, Captain,’ said Janet, ‘I would be far, far happier if I kent where she was. She just said, “I’m goin’ on a voyage, and that she had come to see us.” And it was my belief that the Cornel and his lady were just waiting upon her at Leith.’
‘At Leith!’ they both exclaimed. Then Colonel Hayward turned to the Captain with an air of relief. ‘It’s but a little port, isn’t it? We’ll soon be on the track now.’
‘At least,’ said Janet, ‘I’m thinking it was Leith, for where else would she gang to join a ship? but I thought naething but that the Cornel and his lady were waiting upon her—for ane o
{405}
’ your toors, or whatever you ca’ them,’ she added, with a certain tone of disdain.
‘And she said she was going—where?’
‘She said it would be a long voyage. Ye needna think to trap me, Captain—it’s no like you—as if I was speaking a falsehood with your “Where?” Na; she said not a word to me, but just a long voyage. I would gie my little finger to ken,’ cried Janet, with tears; ‘but she said not a word to me.’
‘Are there boats for America at Leith? God bless my soul! poor little trading things—not even a mail-boat where she could have been comfortable,’ cried the Colonel. And then he added, ‘You must think we’ve been cruel to her to drive her away; but it’s not so—it’s not so. Bellendean will tell you.’
Janet remained grimly silent, offering no contradiction.
As for the Captain, he turned his back upon them both before he gave the called-for testimony. ‘She is flying from love,’ he said, in a choked voice. ‘And to sacrifice herself for—us: and to make us all miserable!’ If he was angry as well as unhappy, there was perhaps little wonder.
‘That’s a’ I can tell ye,’ said Janet. ‘We saw her off from the station, Peter and me. I had nae thought but that her father—her father that she belonged to, that took her from me—would be waitin’ for her at the other end. I never said a word to keep her from her duty to her ain folk; but if I had kent she was her lane, going forth upon the wide world and the sea, on a wild night—Lord! I would have followed her to the ends o’ the earth,’ cried Janet, with hot fervour and tears.
But she said nothing of how far she had followed. How did she know that it might not be prejudicial to Joyce? If Joyce had left them it could not be without reason. No doubt she had kept secret about her destination lest it should be found out by her pursuers. ‘She might have kent me better, that I would have stood for her against all the land and never let on I kent,’ the old woman said to herself. But it was no doubt better that within the strict boundaries of truth she could thus baffle the pursuit and confuse all researches. But what had the Captain to do with it? and what did they mean by flying from love? This gave............