Captain Bellendean followed Mrs. Hayward into the house. It was unusually silent, no one stirring, not even a dog. The air was very warm and soft inside, the fire having the room to itself, and burning in a quiet genial way to keep itself company, with a clear red glow that lighted up everything. The tea-table stood untouched—the curtains drawn a little more than usual over the sides of the windows to keep out the cold, and making a still earlier twilight than that outside. The emptiness and silence and vacancy of that warm and luxurious room, so softly carpeted, curtained, cushioned, so evidently expectant of inhabitation, with all its certain signs and marks of habitual tenancy, yet all empty and silent, were more impressive almost than the emptiness of real abandonment. Mrs. Hayward opened the door of the room for her visitor, and bade him go in while she herself looked for the others. ‘I’ll see if they are in,’ she said; and her heart gave a little jump of expectation as she said it. If she had found Joyce, she would have sent the girl into the drawing-room, while she herself took off her ‘things’ in the most leisurely way upstairs; and she would not have pursued her researches with any idea of finding the Colonel. It annoyed her very much to find Joyce’s room empty, and no trace of her visible. She went over every room where her step-daughter could be before she gave up the search, asking the maids, and finally Baker, though she had no desire to take that personage into her confidence. Colonel Hayward’s lamp was already burning in the library. It was his hour for reading the rest of the paper left unfinished in the morning, and sometimes for a doze; but Joyce was not there.
‘Miss Hayward have gone out, ma’am,’ Baker said.
‘Oh, has she? I had something to say to her. (She would not have Baker think that it was because of Captain Bellendea
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n’s visit that she wanted Joyce.) Ask her to come to me in the drawing-room the moment she comes in.’
‘I will, ma’am,’ said Baker, with stolid gravity; but he chuckled when his mistress, much put out, turned towards the drawing-room door. He knew very well why Joyce was so urgently wanted. ‘He ‘ave come up to the scratch at last,’ Baker said to himself.
Captain Bellendean stood by himself upon the Persian rug before the fire. He was in a very restless mood. There was something in this warm, soft afternoon atmosphere, the sense of domestic calm, the composure of settled life, which was like an insufficient opiate, exciting instead of calming. He was not in a comfortable or happy state of mind. The last time he had been here he was at the height of warm and spontaneous love, bewitched by the presence of the girl who had transported him out of all his bachelor reluctances and defences. This is perhaps a strange way in which to speak of the lover. It is the woman who is supposed to defend herself, to hold back with reluctance, either real or assumed. However, it is one of the enlightenments of our age to recognise that there are two sides to that question. Norman Bellendean had not made up his mind to marry when he took possession of his estate. He did not want even to take possession of his estate; he would have preferred that his father should have held it in his place a few years longer, until he felt more disposed to settle down. But that had not suited Mr. Bellendean’s ideas or plans: and Norman, fresh from India, and with a natural desire after the pleasant experiences of a rich young man’s untrammelled career at home, found himself at once introduced into the responsibilities of an estate and the bondage of a conspicuous position much against his will. But he had set his face against the natural results. He knew that it was expected of him that he should marry and ‘settle down.’ He had an idea even that his neighbours had kindly selected for him a certain number of eligible young ladies among whom he would be expected to make his choice. To be sure nobody could force him to make any such choice. He was free as the air to choose elsewhere, or not to choose at all. But the consciousness that this was what was expected of him chafed the young man. He was coy at first like a girl, on his defence, yet sometimes, with laughter and shame, became conscious of his own little coquetries, and felt how ludicrous was the situation altogether. And then he fled to town, to the excitements of the season, to take his share, for the first time, in that whirl and hurry of entertainment and assembling together which we call
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 society. And then—but this was the thing unaccountable in the midst of so many things which he saw through and understood—he fell in love; and before he knew, was on the eve of asking to share his fortunes, and to ‘settle down’ with him at Bellendean, the girl who had been, a few months before, the village schoolmistress there.
Norman had fallen in love honestly, spontaneously, without any preparation or arrière-pensée. He had neither said to himself that this was the one woman for him, or that she was altogether out of the question for him being what she was. Before he had begun to suspect it, the thing was done. He had thought it was the river, the rowing, the greater simplicity and freedom of the merry party, something in the summer air that was itself delicious as an escape out of London, before he found out that it was Joyce. He had indeed just found out that it was Joyce on the last occasion, when he walked with her home from the garden-party at Sir Sam’s. He had found it out, and in the rush and flood of feeling had told her—he scarcely knew what. He tried to recollect after what he had said, and he could not. He knew that she had not responded; that she had kept him at arm’s-length; and that when he had rushed away, unable to bear the constraint of other people’s society while it was she—she only—whom he wanted, he had said he would come back. The recollection was all confused, disturbed, made uncertain even by excessive thinking over and attempts to remember every detail. And then he had been called away, and it was not possible for him to go back; and then cold afterthought had seized upon him in his heat of love. She had made no reply—what she had said had been ‘No,’ though he did not believe that she had meant the final ‘No’ which would annihilate all his pretensions. He had known that she did not mean that: he had seen in her something of the flood of feeling which had overwhelmed himself. He had gone up to town with his heart throbbing and his head swimming, in anticipation of what would happen when he went back. That was not how a man felt when he expected the ‘No’ which would make an end of all.
But he did not come back—for the moment could not, being called back to Bellendean; and then—did not. Why? Because of the chill of the afterthought which took possession of him; because he remembered, not immediately but after a time, who Joyce was. She was his old Colonel’s daughter, it was true, who was a match for any gentleman. Yes, a match for any gentleman. Colonel Hayward’s daughter, a distinguished soldier, a man who was as good as the best. Under royalty, Colonel Haywar
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d’s daughter might have married any one—no man daring to have said that it was a mésalliance. But then at Bellendean she was the village schoolmistress. Nobody knew much about Colonel Hayward, though they had all heard the story; but everybody knew Joyce. He was aware, for he had heard it talked of, that for Joyce herself it was hard to throw off the habits of her previous existence; and that she was wounded even when told that she must no longer say Miss Greta, and must submit to be treated on a footing of equality by the lady to whom she had looked up. He remembered all this with an acute sense of pain, when he had time to think. That his wife should still have these instincts of inferiority; that she should wish to say Miss Greta; that she should look up to his step-mother as to a being of a superior kind—he grew hot and red at the thought. His wife! It was impossible—it could not be.
These thoughts chilled him to his very heart, and stopped the flood of love which was carrying him away. And many other thoughts came in to add to them. Norman himself was not well known in his county. There was a slight feeling against him as a man who had (though quite innocently on his part) supplanted his own father. He wanted a wife who should be unquestionable, who should be popular—able to help him to the full acquisition of his proper standing in the place. And if he were to bring home to be the mistress of Bellendean a girl whom everybody knew indeed, but knew as Joyce the schoolmistress!—his heart sank within him at that thought, which was suggested by several concurring things; by his step-mother, who, without mentioning Joyce, had laid the state of affairs very clearly before him, and by other incidental remarks and occurrences which supported her view. All these things disturbed his mind greatly. And he had occupations, perhaps arranged for the purpose, to keep him at home. And Greta’s home was at hand, where there was always a sympathetic listener for everything he wanted to say. He did not speak to Greta of Joyce, but Greta spoke of her freely, always with love and admiration, which soothed him, yet at the same time diverted his thoughts a little in affectionate gratitude and approval of this generous little creature, who combined everything that was most desirable in a wife, just as Joyce combined everything that was least desirable. And then there were the poor couple in the village, whom Norman went religiously to see at first, to tell them about their lost child; then with a hunger of the heart that could not be satisfied, to talk about her. He never asked himself how he would like to have this old couple, so excellent, so blameless
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—worthy of all respect, and more than respect—at Bellendean, calling its mistress J’yce, and weeping over her; but the thought, of which he was ashamed, shot across his mind like lightning every time he heard their name.
These things worked in his mind and made him miserable. His step-mother talked to him of marrying, and of the necessity of making a wise choice to establish his position; and Greta met him at every corner—either he was invited to her father’s house, or she came to see her dear aunt Margaret. The girl was entirely innocent of any conspiracy in the matter; but Norman was her hero, and it was scarcely possible for her to conceal her interest in him—her joy when he came, her regret when he went away. It was not difficult for him to discover that in everybody’s opinion Greta was the fittest of wives for him. He could not shut his eyes to the fact that it was so. If he had never seen Joyce, if he had never entered that enchanted country in which she dwelt, never floated on that magic river, never strayed in that garden of dreams—never met and parted—then Greta would have been his bride. She would have come to Bellendean so naturally and simply, with such a carrying out of all good wishes for its new lord, that the marriage would have been pronounced by all to be one of those made in heaven.
But now another image had come in. Sometimes he would wish in his distress that it had never done so—that he had never seen her: but that did not change the fact that she had come in and changed everything. The conflict had grown harder every day. Then he had gone to the Highlands, to the moors, and there the struggle took another form. His demon, his other self, who maintained the controversy with him, began to put it before Norman that he had ‘behaved badly’ to Joyce. Perhaps—we know so little about these demons or dæmons, who are continually interfering in our affairs, making and meddling, and have so little light as to their motives—perhaps that most secret of companions meant to deter him by the shame of that bad behaviour from going near Joyce again. But if so, he calculated without his host. For Norman, in a blaze of shame and self-indignation which drove him like a fiery wind, hurried straight off to London, on the spot, to see Joyce instantly and put himself right.
It was in this mood that he arrived, and found himself in the familiar scene of his summer romance, under grey twilight skies, and in the cosy empty room, lighted with the red fi............