Miss Joliffe

“ Then she shut the book with a bang, got up from her chair, and paced the kitchen till her aunt came back.
Miss Joliffe was full of the visitor's affability.
"It is always the way with these really great people, my dear," she said with effusion. "I have always noticed that the nobility are condescending; they adapt themselves so entirely to their surroundings." Miss Joliffe fell into a common hyperbole in qualifying an isolated action as a habit. ”

“ If I go away and am not heard of, or if anything happens to me, get hold of Martin Joliffe’s papers at once. Take them up to your own room, lock them up, and don’t let them out of your hands. Tell Miss Joliffe it is my wish, and she will hand them over to you. Be very careful there isn’t a fire, or lest they should be destroyed in any other way. ”

“ Miss Joliffe's mind was filled with conflicting emotions; she was glad at the prospect of a more assured future that was opening before her niece, she was hurt at not having been taken sooner into confidence, for Anastasia must certainly have known that he was going to propose; she was chagrined at not having noticed a courtship which had been carried on under her very eyes; she was troubled at the thought that the marriage would entail the separation from one who was to her as a child.
How weary she would find it to walk alone down the long paths of old age! ”

“ It seemed as if there might be some mysterious influence which had brought Miss Joliffe with it just now, and that he might be playing false to his trust with Sharnall if he sent it back again. So he did not remain obdurate, but said: "Well, if you really wish it, I will keep the picture for a time, and whenever you want it you can take it back again." While he was speaking there was a sound of stumbling on the stairs outside, and a bang as if something heavy had been let drop.
"It is that stupid girl again," Miss Joliffe said; "she is always tumbling about. ”

“ Saturday afternoon was Lord Blandamer's hour, and for three Saturdays running Miss Joliffe deserted the Dorcas meeting in order to keep guard at home. It rejoiced the moral hearts of ill-natured and tale-bearing Miss Sharp and of lying and mischief-making Mrs Flint that the disreputable old woman had at least the decency not to show herself among her betters, but such defection was a sore trial to Miss Joliffe. She told herself on each occasion that she could not make such a sacrifice again, and yet the love of Anastasia constrained her. ”

“ Again a selfish reflection crossed her mind—they were not to be parted after all—and again she put it resolutely away. She ran over in her mind all the possible objections that could have influenced her niece in arriving at such a conclusion. Religion was the keynote of Miss Joliffe's life; to religion her thought reverted as the needle to the pole, and to it she turned for an explanation now. It must be some religious consideration that had proved an obstacle to Anastasia. ”

“ Thus Anastasia's schooling came to an end. There was some excuse put forward that the air of Carisbury did not agree with her; and she never knew the real reason till nearly two years later, by which time Miss Joliffe's industry and self-denial had discharged the greater part of Martin's obligation to Mrs Howard. The girl was glad to remain at Cullerne, for she was deeply attached to Miss Joliffe; but she came back much older in experience; her horizon had widened, and she was beginning to take a more perspective view of life. ”

“ Martin Joliffe, her father, had been a handsome man all his life, and had known it. In youth he prided himself on his good looks, and in old age he was careful of his personal appearance. Even when his circumstances were at their worst he had managed to obtain well-cut clothes. They were not always of the newest, but they sat well on his tall and upright figure; "Gentleman Joliffe" people called him, and laughed, though perhaps something less ill-naturedly than was often the case in Cullerne, and wondered whence a farmer's son had gotten such manners. ”

“ Ollivera here tonight," observed Mrs. Joliffe. "He is late."
"Are you?" was the reply of Mr. Greatorex. "John said he might be going out, I remember, but I did not know it was to your house. Don't make too sure of him, Mrs. Joliffe, he seemed idle, and complained of headache."
"I suppose he is busy," remarked Mrs. Joliffe. "All you law people are busy at assize time."
"Louisa, is it as it should be between us?" whispered Bede Greatorex, in an opportunity that occurred when they were alone near the piano. ”

“ There was nothing in the wide world so coveted by Bede Greatorex as that false hand of hers: as many things, fair outside, false within, are coveted by us poor mortals, blind at the best. But Miss Joliffe looked half scared as she left him for a safer part of the room; her eyes and manner were alike restless. Bede followed her, and they were talking together at intervals in an undertone during the rest of the evening. Louisa being evidently ill at ease, but striving to conceal it.
At a quarter to eleven Mr. Bede Greatorex took his departure. ”

“ Joliffe ventured to remark.
“I don’t reproach myself,” said the vicar stiffly. “It had to be done. The public interest called for it. But I wish that old woman could have been spared the shock. Every precaution was taken, the removal was most carefully planned, the whole thing went without a hitch. I can’t think how the news got out.”
Dr. Joliffe confessed that he was equally at a loss. He had questioned Mrs. Bent closely upon the matter, and she had declared that John’s mother had said that God had told her something terrible was going to happen to her son. ”

“ It was so with Miss Joliffe the elder—she longed to be near her niece, and was so very far away; she thought that they went hand in hand, when all the while a different mental outlook set them poles asunder. With all her thousand good honest qualities, she was absolutely alien to the girl; and Anastasia felt as if she was living among people of another nation, among people who did not understand her language, and she took refuge in silence.
The dulness of Cullerne had grown more oppressive to her in the last year. She longed for a life something wider, she longed for sympathy. ”

“ Miss Joliffe said, and then the blank look on her face grew blanker, and she took out her handkerchief. "There is no one to help us. Anyone who ever cared for us is dead long ago; there is no one to write to now." ”

“ He should never know her interest in him; no word, no changing colour should ever betray her; he should never guess that agitation sometimes scarcely left her breath to make so short a rejoinder as "Good-night."
For three Saturdays, then, Miss Joliffe the elder sat on guard at Bellevue Lodge; for three Saturday afternoons in succession, she sat and chafed as the hours of the Dorcas meeting came and went. ”

“ Dr. Joliffe hesitated. A cloud of indecision came on his face. “Before I do that,” he said very slowly, “I should like the opinion of someone who has more knowledge of mental disease than I pretend to.”
“But, my dear fellow,” said the vicar rather surprisedly, “after what I have told you aren’t you already convinced that the fellow is insane?”
“Insanity is a complicated subject,” said the cautious Joliffe. “A very much more complicated subject than the layman appreciates.”
The vicar, at heart an autocrat, began to bristle at once. ”

“ Every form of useless ugliness was amply represented among them— vulgarity masqueraded as taste, niggardliness figured as generosity—and if Miss Joliffe was proud of them as she forwarded them from Cullerne, Anastasia was heartily ashamed of them when they reached her in London.
"We must let bygones be bygones," said Mrs Parkyn to her husband with truly Christian forbearance, "and if this young man's choice has not fallen exactly where we could have wished, we must remember, after all, that he is Lord Blandamer, and make the best of the lady for his sake. ”

“ Time after time Germaine had come in and found Joliffe sitting with her; walking through the hall he had heard her peals of laughter at Joliffe's witticisms, the funny things he said with his serious face.
But after all jesters are men of like passions to their melancholy brethren; they can, and do, throw off the grinning mask. Bella had said, only yesterday, "There's more in Peter than you think, Oliver. Believe me, there is!" Bella always called Joliffe Peter,—she was more formal with Bob Uvedale. ”

“ The only person to exhibit no interest in this unhappy nobleman, who had outraged propriety by offering to contribute to the restoration of the minster, was Anastasia herself; and even tolerant Miss Joliffe was moved to chide her niece’s apathy in this particular.
“I do not think it becomes us, love, young or old, to take so little notice of great and good deeds. Mr Sharnall is, I fear, discontented with the station of life to which it has pleased Providence to call him, and I am less surprised at his not always giving praise where praise should be given; but with the young it is different. ”

“ Joliffe, “if the squire will consent to Murfin, it’s all the same to me, but if my opinion is asked, I am bound to say that to my mind Moriarty is by far the abler man.”
“Why do you think so?” Dr. Parker asked.
“More modern in his ideas. Sees farther. Knows we are only at the threshold of a tremendous subject.”
“Nonsense, Joliffe.” The vicar was losing a little of his patience. “White’s white, and black’s black. This man John Smith ought not to be at large, and neither you nor Brandon nor all the mad doctors in Harley Street can be allowed to dictate to us in the matter. ”

“ Mr Sharnall was not altogether unprepared, for Miss Joliffe had already informed him that a letter from Lord Blandamer had arrived for Mr Westray; so he only said "Ah!" in a tone that implied compassion for the lack of mental balance which allowed Westray to be so easily astonished, and added "Ah, yes?" as a manifesto that no sublunary catastrophe could possibly astonish him, Mr Sharnall. But Westray's excitement was cold-waterproof, and he read the letter aloud with much jubilation.
"Well," said the organist, "I don't see much in it; seven thousand pounds is nothing to him. ”

“ Miss Joliffe said. She was always careful to put in a proper number of "sirs," for, though she was proud of her descent, and considered that so far as birth went she need not fear comparison with other Cullerne dames, she thought it a Christian duty to accept fully the position of landlady to which circumstances had led her. "I am sure I don't know what you will give him for lunch; it is always so difficult to arrange meals for the clergy. If one provides too much of the good things of this world, it seems as if one was not considering sufficiently their sacred calling ”

“ He smiled at this thought, invisibly in the fog; and has not a man a right to some complacence, on whose presence in the house hang a fair maiden's peace and security? Miss Joliffe had said that Anastasia felt nervous whenever he, Westray, was away; it was very possible that Anastasia had given her aunt a hint that she would like him to be told this, and he smiled again in the fog; he certainly need have no fear of any rejection of his suit. ”

“ If the millstone grinds slowly it grinds small, and undischarged accounts bring more pain than the goods to which they relate ever brought pleasure. Among such bitternesses surely most bitter are the bills for things of which the fruition has ceased—for worn-out finery, for withered flowers, for drunk wine. Pilkington's boots, were they never so treble soled, could not endure for ever, and Miss Joliffe's eyes followed unconsciously under the table to where a vertical fissure showed the lining white at the side of either boot. ”

“ She tried to perform that feat of mental gymnastics called retaining one's composure, the desperate and forced composure which the coiner assumes when opening the door to the police, the composure which a woman assumes in returning to her husband with the kisses of a lover tingling on her lips. It is a feat to change the current of the mind, to let the burning thought that is dearest or bitterest to us go by the board, to answer coherently to the banalities of conversation, to check the throbbing pulse. The feat was beyond Miss Joliffe's powers ”

“ Home days and home people, mixed with slight anecdotes of Port Natal life. Mrs. Joliffe had quitted Helstonleigh very shortly after that occurrence that had so startled the town--the death, of John Ollivera. It was perhaps natural, perhaps only a curious accident, that the sad fact should be reverted to between them now as they talked: we all know how one subject leads to another. Clare Joliffe grew confidential about that and other things. One bond she and Roland seemed to have between them this night--a grievance against Mrs. Bede Greatorex. ”

“ He came back one evening from the church weary with a long day's work, and was sitting by the fire immersed in a medley of sleepy and half-conscious consideration, now of the crack in the centre tower, now of the tragedy of the organ-loft, now of Anastasia, when the elder Miss Joliffe entered.
"Dear me, sir," she said, "I did not know you were in! I only came to see your fire was burning. Are you ready for your tea? Would you like anything special to-night? You do look so very tired. I am sure you are working too hard; all the running about on ladders and scaffolds must be very trying. ”

“ It is the same feeling that makes the half-witted attend funerals and church services. At such times they feel themselves to be for once on an equal footing with their fellow-men: all are reduced to the same level; there are no speeches to be made, no accounts to be added up, no counsels to be given, no decisions to be taken; all are as fools in the sight of God.
At the Dorcas meeting Miss Joliffe wore her “best things” with the exception only of head-gear, for the wearing of her best bonnet was a crowning grace reserved exclusively for the Sabbath. ”