April's Lady Part 42

With a kind of desire to hide herself, Joyce has crept into her bed, sore at heart, angry, miserable. No hope that sleep will again visit her has led her to this step, and, indeed, would sleep be desirable? What a treacherous part it had played when last it fell on her!

How grieved he looked--how white! He was evidently most honestly sorry for all the unkind things he had said to her. Not that he had said many, indeed, only--he had looked them. And she, she had been very hard--oh!

too hard. However, there was an end to it. To-morrow would place more miles between them, in every way, than would ever be recrossed. He would not come here again until he had forgotten her--married, probably. They would not meet. There should have been comfort in that certainty, but, alas! when she sought for it, it eluded her--it was not there.

In spite of the trick Somnus had just played her, she would now gladly have courted him again, if only to escape from ever growing regret. But though she turns from side to side in a vain endeavor to secure him, that cruel G.o.d persistently denies her, and with mournful memories and tired eyes, she lies, watching, waiting for the tender breaking of the dawn upon the purple hills.

Slowly, slowly comes up the sun. Coldly, and with a tremulous lingering, the light s.h.i.+nes on land and sea. Then sounds the bursting chants of birds, the rush of streams, the gentle sighings of the winds through herb and foliage.

Joyce, thankful for the blessed daylight, flings the clothes aside, and with languid step, and eyes, sad always, but grown weary, too, with sleeplessness and thoughts unkind, moves lightly to the window.

Throwing wide the cas.e.m.e.nt, she lets the cool morning air flow in.

A new day has arisen. What will it bring her? What can it bring, save disappointment only and a vain regret? Oh! why must she, of all people, be thus unblessed upon this blessed morn? Never has the sun seemed brighter--the whole earth a greater glow of glory.

"Welcome, the lord of light and lamp of day: Welcome, fosterer of tender herbis green; Welcome, quickener of flourish'd flowers' sheen.

Welcome depainter of the bloomit meads; Welcome, the life of everything that spreads!"

Yet to Joyce welcome to the rising sun seems impossible. What is the good of day when hope is dead? In another hour or two she must rise, go downstairs, talk, laugh, and appear interested in all that is being said--and with a heart at variance with joy--a poor heart, heavy as lead.

A kind of despairing rage against her crooked fortune moves her. Why has she been thus unlucky? Why at first should a foolish, vagrant feeling have led her to think so strongly of one unworthy and now hateful to her as to prejudice her in the mind of the one really worthy. What madness possessed her? Surely she is the most unfortunate girl alive? A sense of injustice bring the tears into her eyes, and blots out the slowly widening landscape from her view.

"How happy some o'er other some can be!"

Her thoughts run to Barbara and Monkton. They are happy in spite of many frowns from fortune. They are poor--as society counts poverty--but the want of money is not a cardinal evil. They love each other; and the children are things to be loved as well--darling children! well grown, and strong, and healthy, though terrible little Turks at times--G.o.d bless them! Oh! that she could count herself as blessed as Barbara, whose greatest trouble is to deny herself this and that, to be able to pay for the other thing. No! to be poor is not to be unhappy. "Our happiness in this world," says a writer, "depends on the affections we are able to inspire." Truly she--Joyce--has not been successful in her quest. For if he had loved her, would he ever have doubted her? "Perfect love," says the oldest, grandest testimony of all, "casteth out fear."

And he had feared. Sitting here in the dawning daylight, the tears ran softly down her cheeks.

It is a strange thing, but true, that never once during this whole night's dreary vigil do her thoughts once turn to Beauclerk.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

"Oh, there's stony a leaf in Atholl wood, And mony a bird in its breast, And mony a pain may the heart sustain Ere it sab itsel' to rest."

Barbara meets her on the threshold and draws her with loving arms into the dining-room.

"I knew you would be here at this hour. Lady Baltimore wrote me word about it. And I have sent the chicks away to play in the garden, as I thought you would like to have a comfortable chat just at first."

"Lady Baltimore wrote?"

"Yes, dear. Just to say you were distressed about that unfortunate affair--that drive, you know--and that you felt you wanted to come back to me. I was glad you wanted that, darling."

"You are not angry with me, Barbara?" asks the girl, loosening her sister's arms the better to see her face.

"Angry! No, how could I be angry?" says Mrs. Monkton, the more vehemently in that she knows she _had_ been very angry just at first.

"It was the merest chance. It might have happened to anybody. One can't control storms!"

"No--that's what Mrs. Connolly said, only she called it 'the ilimints,'"

says Joyce, with quite a little ghost of a smile.

"Well, now you are home again, and it's all behind you. And there is really nothing in it. And you must not think so much about it," says Barbara, fondling her hand. "Lady Baltimore said you were too unhappy about it."

"Did she say that? What else did she say?" asks the girl, regarding her sister with searching, eyes. What had Lady Baltimore told her? That impulsive admission to the latter last night had been troubling Joyce ever since, and now to have to lay bare her heart again, to acknowledge her seeming fickleness, to receive Barbara's congratulation on it, only to declare that this second lover has, too, been placed by Fate outside her life, seems too bitter to her. Oh, no--she cannot tell Barbara.

"Why nothing," says Mrs. Monkton, who is now busying herself removing the girl's hat and furs. "What was there to tell, after all?" She is plainly determined to treat the matter lightly.

"Oh--there is a good deal," says Joyce, bitterly. "Why don't you tell me," turning suddenly upon her sister, "that you knew how it would be all along? That you distrusted that Mr. Beauclerk from the very first, and that Felix Dysart was always worth a thousand of him?" There is something that is almost defiant in her manner.

"Because, for one thing, I very seldom call him Felix," says Mrs.

Monkton, with a smile, alluding to the last accusation. "And because, too, I can't bear the 'I told you so' persons.--You mustn't cla.s.s me with them, Joyce, whatever you do."

"I shan't be able to do much more, at all events," says Joyce presently.

"That's one comfort, not only for myself but for my family. I expect I have excelled myself this time. Well," with a dull little laugh, "it will have to last, so----"

"Joyce," says her sister, quickly, "tell me one small thing. Mr.

Beauclerk--he----"

"Yes?" stonily, as Barbara goes on a rock.

"You--you are not engaged to him?"

Joyce breaks into an angry laugh.

"That is what you all ask," says she. "There is no variety; none. No, no, no; I am engaged to n.o.body. n.o.body wants me, and I----'I care for n.o.body, not I, for n.o.body cares for me.' Mark the heavy emphasis on the 'for,' I beg you, Barbara!"

She breaks entirely from her sister's hold and springs to her feet.

"You are tired," says Mrs. Monkton, anxiously, rising too.

"Why don't you say what you really mean?" says Joyce, turning almost fiercely to her. "Why pretend you think I am fatigued when you honestly think I am miserable, because Mr. Beauclerk has not asked me to marry him. No! I don't care what you think. I am miserable! And though I were to tell you over and over again it was not because of him, you would not believe me, so I will say nothing."

"Here is Freddy," says Mrs. Monkton, nervously, who has just seen her husband's head pa.s.s the window. He enters the room almost as she speaks.

"Well, Joyce, back again," says he, affectionately. He kisses the girl warmly. "Horrid drive you must have had through that storm."

"You, too, blame the storm, then, and not me," says Joyce, with a smile.

"Everybody doesn't take your view of it. It appears I should have returned, in all that rain and wind and----"

"Pshaw! Never listen to extremists," says Mr. Monkton, sinking lazily into a chair. "They will land you on all sorts of barren coasts if you give ear to them. For my part I never could see why two people of opposite s.e.xes, if overcome by nature's artillery, should not spend a night under a wayside inn without calling down upon them the social artillery of gossip. There is only one thing in the whole affair," says Mr. Monkton, seriously, "that has given me a moment's uneasiness."

"And that?" says Joyce, nervously.

"Is how I can possibly be second to both of them. Dysart, I confess, has my sympathies, but if Beauclerk were to appear first upon the field and implore my a.s.sistance I feel I should have a delicacy about refusing him."

"Freddy," says his wife, reprovingly.

"Oh, as for that," says Joyce, with a frown, "I do think men are the most troublesome things on earth." She burst out presently. "When one isn't loving them, one is hating them."