The Lady Caroline liked late hours. She was of a restless temperament, and hated solitude, though she was also intolerant of anything like dulness in her associates, and had sufficient taste for the accomplishments which she possessed to render her independent of society. Nevertheless she underwent an immense deal of boredom rather than be alone, and whenever she found herself in a country house, she set to work to form a coterie of late sitters, in order to avoid the early hours which were her abhorrence. She was not an empty-headed woman--far from it. She had a good deal more knowledge than most women of her class, and a great deal of appreciation, some native humour, and much of the kind of tact and knowledge of society which require the possession and the exercise of brains. Nobody would have pronounced her stupid, but every one agreed that she was supercilious and superficial. The truth was that she was empty-hearted, and where that void exists, no qualities of head will fill it; and even those who do not know what it is they miss in the individual are impressed by the effect of the deficiency. The Lady Caroline loved no one in the world except herself, and sometimes she took that solitary object of affection in disgust, which, if transient, was deep. She had arrived at Westhope in one of those passing fits ofennui,mingled with impatience and disgust of herself and irritation with everybody around her. She never at any time liked Westhope particularly, and her brother and his wife had no more interest for her, no more share in her affections, than any other dull lord and lady among the number of dull lords and ladies with whom she was acquainted. Her brother loved her rather more than other people loved her, and Lady Hetherington and she, though they "got on" charmingly, knew perfectly well that the very tepid regard which they entertained for each other had nothing in it resembling sympathy or companionship.
When the Lady Caroline retired to her own rooms after the dinner-party at which Walter Joyce had learned the news from Woolgreaves, she was no more inclined than usual to try the efficacy of a "beauty" sleep; but she was much less inclined to grumble at the dulness of Westhope, to wish the countess could contrive to have another woman or two whom she might talk to of an evening, and who would not want such a lot of sleep to be resorted to so absurdly early, and to scold her maid, than usual. The maid perceived the felicitous alteration in her ladyship's mood immediately. It made an important difference to her. Lady Caroline allowed her to remove all her ornaments and to brush her hair without finding fault with her, and surprised the patient Abigail, who must have had it "made very well worth her while" to endure the fatigues of her office, by telling her she should not require her any longer, and that she was sure she must be tired. Left to herself, the Lady Caroline did not feel so impatient of her solitude as usual, but fell into a reverie which occupied her mind completely. We have seen this nobly born, and in some respects (chiefly external) highly gifted, woman as she appeared among her brother's guests. While she sat by the fire in her dressing-room--with which she never dispensed, at any season, in "the odious English climate," as she was wont to call it--l-et us look into her life and see her as she really was.
Lady Caroline Mansergh had married, or rather, her mother had married her to, a gentleman of considerable importance, wealth, and more than mature years, when she was just seventeen. Very fair and very sweet seventeen, whom it had been somewhat difficult to convince of the delights and advantages of being "an old man's darling." But Lady Hetherington had not accustomed her children to gentle or affectionate treatment, or to having their inclinations consulted in any way. She no more recognised Lady Caroline's right to choose her own husband than she would have consulted her taste in her babyhood about her own sashes; and the girl's feeble attempt at remonstrance in opposition to the solid advantages of the proposals made by Mr. Mansergh did not produce the least effect at the time. Her ladyship carried her point triumphantly, and the girl found her fate more endurable, on the whole, than she had expected. But she never forgave her mother, and that was rather odd, though not, when looked into, very unreasonable; Mr. Mansergh never forgave her either. The countess had accomplished his wishes for him, the countess had bestowed upon him the wife he coveted, but she had deceived him, and when he won his wife's confidence he found her mother out. He had not been se foolish as to think the girl loved him, but he had believed she was willing to become his wife--he had never had a suspicion of the domestic scenes which had preceded that prettytableau vivantat St. George's, Hanover Square, in which every emotion proper to the occasion had been represented to perfection. Fortunately for Lady Caroline, her elderly husband was a perfect gentleman, and treated her with indulgence, consideration, and respect, which appealed successfully to her feelings, and were rewarded by a degree of confidence on her part, which insured her safety and his peace in the hazardous experiment of their unequal marriage. She told him frankly all about herself, her tastes, her feelings--the estrangement, almost amounting to dislike, which existed between herself and her mother--the attempt she had made to avoid her marriage; in short, the whole story of her brief life, in which there had been much to deplore. Mr. Mansergh possessed much firmness of character and good sense, which, though it had not preserved him from the folly of marrying a girl young enough to be his daughter, came to his aid in making the best (and that much better than could have been expected) of the perilous position. Lady Caroline did not, indeed, learn to love her husband in the sense in which alone any woman can be justified in becoming the wife of any man, but she liked him better than she liked any one in the world, and she regarded him with real and active respect, a sentiment which she had never entertained previously for any one. Thus it fell out--contrary to the expectations of "society," which would have acted in the aggregate precisely as Lady Hetherington had done, but which would also have congratulated itself on its discernment, and exulted hugely had the matrimonial speculation turned out a failure--that Lady Caroline Mansergh was happy and respectable. She never gave cause for the smallest scandal; she was constantly with her husband, and was so naturally unaffectedly cheerful and content in his company, that not the most censorious observer could discover that he was used as a shield or a pretence. There was a perfectly good understanding between Mr. Mansergh and his young wife on all points; but if there was more complete accord on one in particular than on others, it was in keeping the countess at a distance. The manoeuvring mother profited little by the success of her scheme. To be sure she got rid of her daughter at the comparatively trifling expense of a splendidtrousseau,and the unconsidered risk of the welfare and the reputation of the daughter in question, and she had the advantage over the majority of her friends of having married her advantageously in her first season. But the profit of the transaction terminated there. In her daughter's house Lady Hetherington remained on the same ceremonious footing as any other visiting acquaintance, and every attempt she made either to interfere or advise was met by a polite and resolute coldness, against the silent obstinacy of which she would have striven unsuccessfully had she not been much too wise to strive at all. If the barrier had been reared by Lady Caroline's hands alone, though they were no longer feeble, the countess would have flung it down by the force of her imperious will; but when she found that her daughter had her husband's opinion and authority to back her, Lady Hetherington executed the strategic movement of retreat with celerity and discretion, and would never have been suspected of discomfiture had she not spoken of her daughter henceforth with suspicious effusion. Then "society" smiled, and knew all about it, and felt that Mr. Mansergh had been foolish indeed, but not immoderately, not unpardonably so. Lady Caroline was very popular and very much admired, and had her only friend's life been prolonged for a few years, until she had passed the dangerous period of youth, she might have been as worthy of esteem and affection as she was calculated to inspire admiration. But Mr. Mansergh died before his wife was twenty-three years old, and left her with a large fortune, brilliant beauty, and just sufficient knowledge of the world to enable her to detect and despise its most salient snares, but with a mind still but half educated, desultory habits, and a wholly unoccupied heart. Her grief for her husband's loss, if not poignant and torturing, was at least sincere, deep, and well founded. When he died, she had said to herself that she should never again have so true, so wise, and so constant a friend, and she was right. Life had many pleasant and some good things in store for Lady Caroline Mansergh, but such a love as that with which her husband had loved her was not among them. She acknowledged this always; the impression did not fade away with the first vehemence of grief--it lasted, and was destined to deepen. She strayed into a bad "set" before long, and to her youth and impulsiveness, with her tendency toennui,and her sad freedom from all ties of attachment, the step from feeling that no one wassogood as her husband had been, to believing that no one else was good at all, was very easy. And so Lady Caroline acquired a dangerous and demoralising trick of contempt for her fellows, which she hid under a mask of light and careless good-nature indeed, and which was seriously offensive to no one, but which condemned her, nevertheless, to much interior solitude and dreariness. That she was notofthe world she lived in, was due less to any elevation of sentiment than to a capricious and disdainful humour, which caused her to grow bored very readily, and to dismiss her associates from her thoughts after a brief scrutiny, in which their follies and foibles came into strong light, and the qualities which would have required time and patience to find out remained undiscovered.
It had occurred to Lady Caroline Mansergh, on several occasions of late, to wonder whether she was destined ever to experience the passion called love. She had not remained ignorant of the science of flirtation up to her present time of life, but she had not been beguiled, ever so briefly, into mistaking any of her flirtations for love. So she was accustomed to wonder wearily, when in an unusually desultory mood, whether she should ever feel that there existed in the world a human being for whom she should be willing to suffer, with whom life would be happy, without whom it would be intolerable, and whose welfare she could deliberately and practically prefer to her own. Of late she had begun to think that Fate was against her in this particular. The idea of the possibility of feeling love for one of the men whom she was in the habit of meeting was quite preposterous; she did not hold her favourite followers half so dear as Hassan, her black barb, or like them half so well as Gelert, her greyhound. Her life would doubtless continue to be the bright, fashionable, flimsy, careless, ratherennuyéexistence it had hitherto been, and she should never know anything of the power, the pain, the engrossing influence of love. So much the better, she would think, in her more hopeful moods; it must be a narrowing kind of influence, bounding all one's horizon within such small limits, shutting up one's mortal vista with one figure.
When the Lady Caroline dismissed her maid, and resigned herself to reverie, on this night, it was not, after her accustomed fashion, to dwell in her thoughts on the dulness, staleness, flatness, and unprofitableness of the world in general, and the section of it in which she lived in particular. She had quite a distinct subject for thought, she had a figure and a face in her fancy, a voice in her memory which filled them wholly. What if she had been wrong, if not only love were coming to her, to fill her life with delight, and turn its weariness with purpose and meaning, but love at first sight? A ridiculous notion, entertained by school-girls, housemaids, novelists, and poets, but scouted by all reasonable people of the world, and in "society." She knew this, but she did not care; there was a strange delicious thrill about her heart; and in the swift flight of her thoughts she swept the beams of happy possibilities, and felt that she could, and would, and did despise society and its notions on this point.
What did she know about Walter Joyce? Absolutely nothing, but that he was young, handsome, brightly intelligent, presumably poor, and socially insignificant, or he would not be her silly brother's secretary. Her attention had been directed to him at first, because she felt a compassionate curiosity about the person whom circumstances had oppressed so cruelly as to oblige him to purvey ideas, and language in which to express them, for Lord Hetherington. Curiosity and compassion had been replaced, within a few minutes, by admiration, which the difference between the manners and bearing of Walter, and those of the men with whom she was accustomed to associate, rather tended to increase. There was no awkwardness about Walter, but neither was there the slightest pretence. He was at ease in the unaccustomed company he found himself among, but he did not affect to be other than an observant stranger in it.
"He has an intellect and a heart," said Lady Caroline half aloud, as she rose from her seat by the fireside, and brought her reverie to a conclusion, "and why should I care for the world's opinion? It could not make me happy, if I conciliated it; but I thinkhecould, if I defied it for his sake."
After the ladies left the dining-room, Walter Joyce, in the general re-arrangement of seats thereon ensuing, found himself placed next to Mr. Gould. It was soon obvious that his propinquity was not accidental on Mr. Gould's part. That keen-looking gentleman at once wheeled round in his chair, helped himself to a few olives and a glass of the driest sherry within his reach, and then fixing his bright steel-blue eyes on his neighbour, said--
"That was news for you, that about young Creswell's accident, Mr. Joyce?"
"It was indeed," replied Walter; "and--to a certain extent--sad news."
"You knew the boy who was killed, and his father?"
"Both. I knew the boy well; he was a pupil in the school where I was an usher, and I knew the father--by sight--as a man in my position would know a man in his."
"Ah--of course!" and Mr. Gould glanced more keenly than ever at his interlocutor, to see whether he was speaking earnestly or contemptuously. Earnestly, he thought, after a glance, and Joyce fell a little in the worldly man's opinion. He sucked an olive slowly, made a little pattern on his plate with the stones, and then said, "Do you think this affair will make any difference in Mr. Creswell's future?"
"In his future? Will the loss of his son make any difference in his future? Are you serious in asking such a question, Mr. Gould? Will it not leave his life a blank, a vague misery without----"
"Yes, yes, of course; I know all about that. You'll pardon me, Mr. Joyce, I'm a much older man than you, and therefore you won't mind my experiencing a certain amount of delight in your perfect freshness and simplicity. As to leaving the man's life blank, and all that--nonsense, my dear sir, sheer nonsense. He'll find plenty of distraction, even at his age, to fill up the blank. Now, I was not considering the question from a domestic point of view in the least; what I meant was, do you think that it will alter any of his intentions as regards public life?"
"Public life?--Mr. Creswell?"
"Yes, indeed, public life, Mr. Creswell! I suppose now there's no harm in telling you that the Conservative authorities in London, the wire-pullers in Westminster, have long had it in their minds to wrest the seat for Brocksopp from the Liberals, that at the next general election they have determined to make the fight, and they have selected Mr. Creswell as their champion."
"Mr. Creswell of Woolgreaves--going into Parliament?"
"Well, that's rather a summary way of putting it, Mr. Joyce," said the lawyer, with a chuckle. "Say rather, going to try to get into Parliament! Bidwell, of Brocksopp, the Liberal agent, is a deuced long-headed fellow, and will make a tremendous struggle to keep Mr. Creswell out in the cold. Do you know Bidwell, of Brocksopp?"
"I have a slight acquaintance with him."
"Then you've a slight acquaintance with a remarkably sharp character, and one who never misses a chance for his party. It will be a tremendous fight, sir, this next election," said Mr. Gould, warming up, placing all his olive-stones in a row, and charging at them with his dessert-knife; "they'll do all they can to beat us, and we shall have to do all we know to hold our own. When I say 'we,' of course I reckon you as a Conservative."
"I--I have no political opinions. I take no interest in politics," said Joyce absently.
Mr. Creswell, from any but a domestic point of view, could not rouse an emotion in him.
"Don't you indeed? No political opinions? Ah, I remember when I hadn't any myself. That was--dear me!" and the astute parliamentary agent made a new pattern with the olive-stones, while his thoughts went back for a quarter of a century, to a time when he was under articles in Gray's Inn, used to frequent the Cider Cellars, and was desperately in love with the columbine of the Adelphi.
They went to the drawing-room soon afterwards. There was some instrumental music of the most approved firework style, and then Captain Frampton growled away at "Il Balen" with great success, and Joyce was just making up his mind to slip away, when Lady Caroline Mansergh sat down to the piano, and began to sing one of Moore's melodies to her own accompaniment. Ah, surely it is not laying one's self open to the charge of fogeyism to grieve over the relegation to the "Canterbury" of those charming ballads, wherein the brightest fancies were wedded to the sweetest sounds? If the "makers of the people's ballads" possess the power ascribed to them, there is, indeed, but little cause to wonder at the want of tone prevalent in a society, which for its drawing-room music alternates between mawkish sentimentality and pot-house slang. When the first note of Lady Caroline's rich contralto voice rippled round the room, the guests standing about in small knots, coffee-cup in hand, gradually sidled towards the piano, and ere she had sung the first stanza even Colonel Tapp's ventriloquial grumbling--he was discussing army estimates, and the infernal attempts at cheeseparing of the Manchester School--was hushed. No one in the room was uninfluenced by the singer's spell, on no one had it so much effect as on Walter Joyce, who sat far away in the shadow of a curtain, an open photograph-book unheeded on his knee, drinking in the melody and surrendering himself entirely to its potent charms. His eyes were fixed on the singer, now on her expressive face, now on her delicate little hands as they went softly wandering over the keys, but his thoughts were very, very far away. Far away in the old school garden, with its broad grass-plots, its ruddy wall, its high elm trees, frame-like bordering the sweet domestic picture. Far away with Marian, the one love which his soul had ever known. Ah, how visibly he saw her then, the trim figure noiselessly moving about on its domestic errands, the bright beryl eyes upturned in eager questioning towards his own, the delicate hand with its long thin fingers laid in such trusting confidence on his arm! What ages it seemed since he had seen her! what a tremendous gulf seemed ever to separate them! And what prospect was there of that union for which they had so fervently prayed? The position he was to gain--where was that? What progress had he made in--"friends once linked together I've seen around me fall, like leaves in wintry weather!" Ay, ay, the poor old dominie, at rest--better there than anywhere else, better to be out of the strife and the worry, and--good heavens was this what he had promised her? was this the courage on which he had prided himself, and which was to carry him through the world? "Brava! brava! Oh, thank you so very much, Lady Caroline. Mayn't we hope for another? Thanks, so much!" The song was over; the singer had left the piano. He caught one glance as he bowed and murmured his thanks. He could not stand it any longer, his thoughts had completely unmanned him, and he longed for solitude. If it were rude to leave the party he must brave even Lady Hetherington's wrath, but he would try and get away unobserved. Now, while the hum of admiration was still going on, and while people were gathering round Lady Caroline, was the opportunity. He availed himself of it, slipped away unperceived, and hurried to his own room.
He closed the door behind him, turned the key, and flung himself on to the bed, in the dark. He felt that he could contain himself no longer, and now that he was alone and unseen, there was no further reason to restrain the tears which had been welling into his eyes, and now flowed unchecked down his cheeks. He was a man of nervous temperament, highly wrought susceptibilities, and acute sympathies, which had been over-excited during the evening by the story of Tom Creswell's death, his own recollections of his past life, and the weird thought-compelling power of Lady Caroline's music. There was no special occasion for these tears; he knew nothing had happened to Marian, nothing--no, nothing had happened calculated in any way to interpose any--any barrier between them; his position was pleasant, his prospects brighter than he could have hoped--and yet, and yet! How very strange that she had not written lately!--unless, indeed, she had been completely absorbed by ministering to the trouble round her. Walter could easily picture to himself the comfort she must have been to all in the midst of the desolation which had fallen upon that hitherto prosperous house; he recollected how even in the midst of her own deep sorrow she had been able, at the time of her father's death, to rouse her mother from the lethargic state of grief into which she had fallen; and if Marian could do that then, while her own heart was bleeding, how much more would she be able to bestir herself now, when neither for the dead, nor for those left behind, had she anything but a kindly interest? And might not this sad event prove a useful lesson to her; might it not prove the one thing needful to render her a perfect character, showing her, as it would, that there are worse misfortunes than poverty, and that grief can slip in behind the shields of wealth and position, and abase the heads of their possessors to the dust? That longing for money and worship of position was the only blot in Marian's character, as seen by Walter Joyce's eyes, and if this accident led to its eradication, it would not have been without its beneficent purpose.
He rose from the bed, and felt his way towards his dressing-table. As he was groping for the matches, his hand fell upon an unopened letter. From Marian, without a doubt; he felt his heart throbbing; at once he struck a light and looked hurriedly for the familiar writing. No, not from Marian! Totally unlike her square neatly written notes; a large blue letter, directed in a straggling hand, and awkwardly folded. Though Joyce was disappointed and, vexed for an instant, he quickly recovered himself, and he took the letter up and smiled at it pleasantly, for he had recognised the style and the writing, and he knew that it had come from old Jack Byrne.
Thus it ran:
"London, Thursday.
"MY DEAR BOY,
"You'll wonder I haven't answered that capital letter you sent me, giving a description of Westhope and its people, and your life there. You'll wonder, because you are young; when you're as old as I am you won't wonder at anything, except when you sometimes find a man tell the truth; but you shouldn't wonder then, because it would only be an accident. I am very glad that you seem to be so comfortable among the swells, but I never had much fear about it. I know them root and branch, the whole lot, though I'm only an old bird-stuffer; but I'm like Ulysses, I've seen men and cities, and used my eyes--used 'em so much that, by Jove! I don't think they'll last me much longer--at least, for the fine work in my business. What was I saying? Oh, I see; I know the swells, and I know that if they see a man respect himself they always respect him. All of 'em, sir; don't make any mistake about it. All of 'em, the most ineffable transparencies, who think you're sewn up and stuffed in quite a different way from themselves, the kindly noodles, and the clever people--for there are clever people, a few, even among swells--all like to see a man respect himself. You'll have found out by this time, if you did not know it before, that Lord Hetherington is one of the kindly noodles, and one of the best of 'em. He can't help believing in his blood, and his lineage, and his descent from those bloodthirsty, ignorant old ruffians of the Middle Ages, whose only good was that they killed other bloodthirsty, ignorant old ruffians, and he can't help being a fool, that being the penalty which a man generally has to pay for being able to boast of his descent; but he is harmless and kind-hearted. How goes on the book? Take my advice, and make it light and anecdotical. Boil down those old chronicles and parchments of the great West family, and serve them up in asoufflet. And don't let your heavy pedagogical style be seen in the dish! If you do, everybody will know at once that my lord has had nothing to do with the book on the title-page of which his name figures. I suppose it wouldn't do to put in any bad spelling, would it? That would be immensely reassuring to all who know Lord Hetherington as to the real authorship.
"And my lady, how is thatgrande dame? I've grinned a hundred times, thinking over your face of indignation and disgust at the manner in which she received you that day we went to call on their magnificences at the Clarendon, with a view to your engagement! How does she treat you now? Has she ordered you to black her boots yet, or to wash her lap-dog, or to take your meals with her lady's-maid? Or, more likely still, has she never taken any notice at all of you, having no idea of your existence, beyond the fact that there is a writing-machine--you--in the library, as there is a churn in the dairy, and a mangle in the laundry! And does this behaviour gird you, and do you growl inwardly about it, or are you a philosopher, and able to despise anything that a woman can do to hurt you? If the latter, come up to town at once, and I will exhibit you in a show as alusus naturae,and we will divide the profits and make our fortunes.
"And while on that subject, Walter, let me drop my old cynical fun, and talk to you for a minute honestly and with all the affection of which my hard, warped, crabbed nature is capable. I can write to you what I couldn't say to you, my boy, and you won't think me gushing when I tell you that my heart had been tight locked and barred for years before I saw you, and that I don't think I've been any the worse since you found a key somehow--God knows how--to unlock it. Now, then, after that little bit of maudlin nonsense, to what I was going to say. The first time we were ever in my old room together talking over your future, I proposed to start you for Australia. You declined, saying that you couldn't possibly leave England; and when I pressed you about the ties that bound you here, and learned that you had no father or mother, you boggled, and hesitated, and broke down, and I was obliged to help you out of your sentence by changing the subject. Do you remember all that? And do you think I didn't know what it all meant? That marvellous stupidity of young men, which prevents them from thinking that any one has ever been young but themselves! I knew that it meant that you were in love, Walter, and that's what I want to ask you about. From that hour until the day we pressed hands in farewell at Euston Square, you never alluded to her again! In the long letter which you sent me, and which now lies before me, a letter treating fully of your present and your future life, there is no word of her Don't think I am surprised at a fine, generous, hearty, hopeful young fellow not giving his love-confidence to a withered, dried-up old skittle like myself; I never expected it; I should not mention it now, save that I fear that the state of affairs can be scarcely satisfactory between you, or you, who have placed your whole story unreservedly before me, would not have hidden this most important part of it. Nor do I want to ask you for a confidence which you have not volunteered. I only wish you to examine the matter calmly, quietly, and under the exercise of your common sense, of which you have plenty. And if it is unsatisfactory in any way---give it up!Yes, Walter, give it up! It sounds harshly, ridiculously, I know, but it is honest advice, and if I had had any one to say it to me years and years ago, and to enforce my adoption of it, I should have been a very different man. Believe in no woman's love, Walter; trust no woman's looks, or words, or vows. 'First of all would I fly from the cruel madness of love,' says Mr. Tennyson, and he is right. Cruel madness, indeed we laugh at the wretched lunatic who dons a paper crown, and holds a straw for a sceptre, while all the time we are hugging our own tinsel vanities, and exulting in our own sham state! That's where the swells have the pull, my boy! They have no nonsense about mutual love, and fitness, and congeniality, and all that stuff, which is fitted for nothing but valentine-mongers and penny-romancists; they are not very wise, but they know that the dominant passion in a man's heart is admiration of beauty, the dominant passion in a woman's is ambition, and they go quietly into the mart and arrange the affair, on the excellent principle of barter. When I was your age I could not believe in this, had high hopes and aspirations, and scouted the idea of woman's inconstancy--went on loving and hoping and trusting, from month to month, and from year to year, wore out my youth and my freshness and my hope, and was then flung aside and discarded, the victim of 'better opportunities' and 'improved position.' Oh, Lord! I never intended to open my mouth about this, but if you ever want to hear the whole story, I'll tell you some day. Meanwhile, think over these hints, my boy Life's too short and too hard as it is, and--verbum sap.
"Most probably you'll never take any further notice of me, after that. If you have corns, I must have been hard and heavy upon them, and you'll curse my impertinence; if you haven't, you'll think me the prosiest of old bores. Just like me. I see plainly that I must have made a mess of it, whichever way it turns up.
"You tell me to send you news. Not much about; but what there is, encouraging and good for the cause. There is very little doubt that at the general election, which will come off in a few months, we shall be stronger by far than we ever expected, and shall cut the combs of some of those aristocrats and plutocrats very close indeed. There is a general feeling that blood and moneybags have divided the spoil too long, and and that worth and intellect may be allowed a chance of being brought into play. There are three or four men at the club, whom you know, and who are tolerably certain of seats, and who, if once they get the opportunity of making their voices heard in Parliament, will show the world of what stuff real Englishmen consist. Who do you think is helping us immensely? Shimmer, he of Bliffkins's! He has got an engagement on theComet--a new journal which has just started in our interest, and he is writing admirably. A good deal of Lemprière's dictionary, and Bohn's quotations, and Solomon's proverbs, mixed up with a dashing incisive style and sound Saxon English, has proved immensely telling. People are buying theCometeverywhere, and Shimmer's salary has been twice raised, and he has been applied to for his photograph. He does not come much to Bliffkins's now, greatly to old Wickwar's relief. The old gentleman has expressed his opinion that since Robsperry (he is supposed to have meant Robespierre) there has been no such sanguinary democrat as Shimmer. When will you come back to us, Walter? I look at the place where I used to see you sitting, before I ever spoke to you; I sit and stare at it now until I feel my eyes---- D--d old fool!
"Good-bye, boy. Let me hear from you again soon. You know what you promised if ever you wanted money or anything. J.B.
"Opened again to say Shimmer has been here inquiring after you.Cometpeople want a correspondent at Berlin--special and important. S. thinks you'll do. Will you go? J.B."
The company had long since departed from Westhope; the family had long since retired to rest; dim lights glimmered here and there in the windows; but Walter Joyce remained sitting on the side of his bed, with Jack Byrne's open letter in his hand. When he wrote it the old man little thought what a field of painful speculation he had laid open for its recipient.
The interest which Walter Joyce had awakened in Lady Caroline Mansergh on the night of the dinner-party by no means died out, or even waned. Flirtation is certainly not an exceptional amusement in the dead level of dreary occupations which a country-house life affords, but this word-pastime was certainly not flirtation. The notion of flirting with her brother's secretary, which would have been exceedingly comic to the rest of the world, and afforded a vast deal of amusement to the kindly noodle portion of the Westhope society, did not strike Lady Caroline at all in a ridiculous light; but to flirt with Walter Joyce she knew would be impossible. The sighing and looking, the giving and taking, the fetching and carrying, and all the poodle tricks which are played by the best style of male flirts, in the best style of society, she knew would be impossible to him; and though she had had long practice in the art, and had derived no little amusement from it, she felt it would be repulsive to her to try her hand on such a subject. If not a desire for flirtation, what was it that irresistibly impelled her to seek this man's society; that made her start and thrill at the unexpected sound of his voice; that enabled her to picture to herself so vividly certain expressions in his eyes, gestures of his hands, to recall phrases of his conversation? Was it real passion? Had love come to her at last? Was this the man with whom her fate was to be for ever bound up? Lady Caroline half smiled as she contemplated this tremendous possibility. It was too wild, too romantic, this story of the Lord of Burleigh with the sexes reversed, and with herself for heroine; the man was different from those with whom her life had been passed, had brains and courage to use them, did not think the society thoughts nor speak the society language, and was not conformable in any way to the society pattern. That was what it meant. That was the source of the strange interest she felt in him--interest which was friendly and appreciative, but nothing further.
Nothing further. That was why she had manoeuvred, carefully, skilfully, and with perfect feminine tact, never ceasing until the object was accomplished, that it was understood that Mr. Joyce joined the family circle always after dinner, whether there were visitors or not; that was why she invariably found opportunities to have him seated by her side, or standing by her turning over the pages of her music, while Lord Hetherington, with a dexterity only acquired by long practice, held up the newspaper before him, being at the time sound asleep, and her ladyship, scorning concealment, slumbered placidly in the garish light of the moderator lamp.
Nothing further. That was why Lady Caroline had suddenly taken to pedestrian exercise, wanted an escort occasionally to the village, and hated the idea of being followed about in the country by a footman; found she had quite forgotten that charming Shakespeare, and determined to read his dear plays again, and would not trouble Mr. Joyce to send those heavy big volumes from the library, but would come in and read them there occasionally, if he was quite sure she did not disturb him. The jealous tortures endured by the valiant Othello, which Lady Caroline selected for her first Shakespearian reading, apparently did not interest her very much. The great family history of the Wests, derived from ancient chronicles and documents, upon which Lord Hetherington's secretary was engaged, made but little progress on the occasions of her ladyship's visits. There were the longest and the pleasantest talks. In Caroline Mansergh's hands Joyce was as pliable as potter's clay. In less than a week after the dinner-party he had told her the history of his life, made her acquainted with his hopes and fears, his wishes and aspirations. Of course she heard about his engagement to Marian; equally of course that was the part of the story in which she felt and shared the greatest interest. Very quickly she knew it all. Under her skilful questioning, Joyce not merely told her what had actually occurred, but opened to her the secret chambers of his heart, and displayed to her penetrating sense feelings with the existence of which he himself was scarcely acquainted. The odd uncomfortable sensation which first came over him in his last walk with Marian round the school garden, when she spoke of how it might have been better if they had never met, and how poorly armed he was for the great conflict of life, the renewal of the sting with its bitterness increased fifty-fold at the receipt of her letter dilating on the luxury of Woolgreaves, and her dread of the poverty which they would have to encounter, the last hint given to him in the worldly advice contained in Jack Byrne's letter--all these were submitted to Lady Caroline's keen powers of dissection, without Walter's being in the least aware how much of his inner life he had made patent to her. A look, a nod, a word here or there, begat, increased, and developed his assurance of sympathy; and he could have talked till all eternity on the subject dearest to his heart.
Lady Caroline let him talk, and only starred the dialogue with occasional interjections, always of a sympathising character. When she was alone, she would sit for hours reviewing the conversation just past in the minutest detail, weighing and reweighing sentences and even words which Joyce had spoken, sifting, balancing, ascribing to such and such influences, putting aside such and such theories, bringing all her feminine wits--and in the great points of feminine cleverness, an odd common sense, and an undefinable blundering on to the right, she had no superior--to the solution of the question of Walter Joyce's future so far as Marian Ashurst was concerned. Whatever conclusion she may have arrived at she kept to herself; no one ever had the slightest glimmering of it. Her talks with Walter Joyce were as numerous as ever, her interest in his career no less, her delight in his society by no means impaired; but the name of Miss Ashurst never passed Lady Caroline's lips, and whenever she saw the conversation necessarily veering that way, she invariably struck it out into some new channel. Not that Lady Caroline Mansergh had any jealousy of this "simple maiden in her flower;" she would not have allowed that for an instant, would not have allowed, in her most secret communings with herself, that such a thing could be possible; for she had been properly and rigidly brought up in the Belgravian code of morals, though a little inclined to kick against them now and think for herself; and the Belgravian code of morals holds the cultivation of thebien-séancesas the most essential portion of a young lady's curriculum, and thebien-séanceseffectively ignored the existence of any such low sentiment as jealousy in the minds of perfectly constituted members of the upper classes. Not that Walter Joyce would have noticed the display of any such passion as jealousy, or, as Lady Caroline thought rather ruefully, could allow any such feeling to be excited in him. In all her experience--and it had been large and vast--she had never come across a man so completely---- Well, she could scarcely find a term for it. It was not apathetic; because he was bright and intelligent and earnest. Perhaps confiding was the best word to use so far as his relations with Marian were concerned, though, as Lady Caroline felt, those relations were a little dashed with recent doubt; and as for his feelings with regard to herself, skilled mistress as she was in the art of such wordy warfare, Lady Caroline could never trap him into an ambuscade, or force him into anything like an acknowledgment of a liking for her. It was not for the want of trying to evoke it, not for lack of given opportunity on her part, that this avowal never was made. Fortune favoured her, notably on one occasion; and if Walter Joyce had ever contemplated anything beyond a feeling of pleasant friendship for Lady Caroline Mansergh, he would have availed himself of that occasion for expressing it. Thus it came about. Lady Caroline was sitting half buried in a big soft easy-chair before the library fire, presumably enjoyingOthello,but really watching her brother's secretary, who was busily transcribing from a big black-letter volume before him some of the glorious deeds of her remote ancestry. Raising his eyes after one of his pen-dips, Joyce met Lady Caroline's glance fixed straight upon him, and said--
"Thinking of Iago's subtlety, Lady Caroline, or Desdemona's innate weakness? The former, I should say, judging from your expression."
"My expression must be very poor, then, Mr. Joyce, or your powers of reading expression must be extremely limited. I was thinking of something totally different."
"May one ask of what?"
He had had a long day at the chronicles of the West family, and a little relief was absolutely necessary.
"Oh dear, yes; my thoughts were certainly not to be marked 'confidential' or even 'private.' I was thinking about our going back to town."
"Oh, indeed! Is that imminent?"
"I should say certainly. Parliament meets within a fortnight, and West, I mean Lord Hetherington, never misses that. Lady Hetherington won't let him go alone, and once in Beaufort Square, I suppose they'll stop on."
"I suppose so. This house will seem wonderfully different when you have all left it."
"Naturally. Deserted houses must be different to those filled with company, though their actual appearance is of course only known to the housekeeper who is left in them, and housekeepers seldom give their impressions to the world."
"If you are interested in the subject, perhaps you will permit me to give you a faithful photograph of Westhope in its dismantled state."
"Evolved from your inner graciousness, like the German's idea of the camel?"
"On the contrary, drawn in the minutest detail from personal observation. The exact position of the pen which Lord Hetherington threw down after signing his last cheque for Mr. Deacon, the steward, the state of the withering hothouse flowers left by her ladyship on her table in the drawing-room, the vacant chair in the library once filled by----"
"Thanks, that's enough! I won't trouble you to be poetical, Mr. Joyce; that will be wanted one day at Helmingham, I suppose, and it's never wise to be extravagant with one's ideas. But you don't mean to say you think you will be left behind here, at Westhope, when the family returns to town?"
"Assuredly, Lady Caroline! How else should I be able to make any progress with my work?"
"I think you will find," said Lady Caroline, with a smile, "that the history of our family, wonderfully interesting as it doubtless is, and anxiously expected by the literary world, as it necessarily must be, will have to remain in abeyance for a little time. The fact is, that Lord Hetherington has been recently much struck with the levelling and democratic spirit of the age, and has determined, so far as he is able, to stem the torrent. He will need a certain amount of assistance before bringing the matter before the House of Lords, and for that assistance I know he looks to you!"
He was a trying man, this Mr. Joyce. There was a scarcely suppressed gleam of fun in Lady Caroline's usually earnest eyes that ought to have conveyed to any man acquainted with the circumstances of the position the fact that this new combination had been suggested by her, and by her alone, and that she perfectly appreciated not merely its serviceable but its ludicrous side. Walter Joyce appreciated neither. He should of course be ready to give his services in whatever way they might be required, he said, adding with clumsy candour that he had been almost looking forward to the time of the family's departure for the additional facilities which would be afforded him in getting on with his work.
This was too much for Lady Caroline. A flush passed across her cheek, as she said--
"It has been Lady Hetherington's accidental, and by no means wilful error, Mr. Joyce, that your time has been already so much intruded on. We have, unfortunately for us no doubt, been unaccustomed to the ways of recluses, and have preposterously imagined that a little society might be more agreeable to them than----"
But here she stopped, catching sight of the troubled expression on his face, of his downcast eyes and twitching lips. There was silence for a moment, but he soon mastered his emotion.
"I see plainly that I have blundered, as was not unnatural that I should, through the lack of power of expressing myself clearly. Believe me, Lady Caroline, that I am infinitely indebted to Lord and Lady Hetherington, and to you especially. Yes, indeed, for I know where the indebtedness lies--more especially to you for all the kindness you have shown me, and the notice you have taken of me. And I--I intended----"
"Will you prove the truth of your protestations by never saying another word on the subject? The give-and-take principle has been carried out in our society as much as the most ardent democrat, say yourself, Mr. Joyce, could have desired. I am sure you are too good-natured to mourn over the hours torn from your great work and frittered away in frivolous conversation when you know that you have helped Lady Hetherington and myself to undergo an appalling amount of country people, and that while the dead Wests may grieve over the delay in the publication of their valour and virtue, the living Wests are grateful for assistance rendered them in their conflict with the bores. However, all that is nearly at an end. When the family is at Hetherington House, I have no doubt you will be enabled to enjoy the strictest seclusion. Meantime, there is only one festivity that I know of which is likely to cause us to ask you to tear yourself away from your chronicles."
"And that is?"
"A skating-party. Consequently dependent on the state of the weather. So that if you are still hermitically inclined, you had better pray for a thaw. If the frost holds like this, we are anticipating a very pleasant afternoon to-morrow: the people from the barracks and some others are coming over, the men report the ice in capital order, and there's to be luncheon and that kind of thing. But perhaps, after all, you don't skate, Mr. Joyce?"
"Oh yes, indeed--and you?"
"Nothing in the world I'm so fond of, or, if I may say so, that I do so well. We wintered one year in Vienna; there was a piece of water privately enclosed called the Schwann Spiegel, where the Emperor--never mind!"
The next day was very bright and very pleasant. Whether Walter Joyce had prayed for a thaw or not, it is certain that the frost of the previous night had been very mild as compared with its immediate predecessors; the wind had shifted round to the south-west, the sun had actual warmth, and weatherwise people assumed to notice a certain dun effect of the atmosphere, and therefrom to presage snow. The notion of the skating-party about to take place had been received with immense delight at the barracks at Brocksopp, and at the various houses to which invitations had been forwarded. To exhibit themselves in becoming costume a little removed from ordinary every-day dress was in itself a delight to the younger members of society; while the elders, independently of their gratification in being brought personally into contact with the Lord-Lieutenant of the county, knew the capabilities of the Westhope cellar and kitchen, and recognised the fact that luncheon under such auspices meant something more than sandwiches and cheap sherry. The gathering was held on a large sheet of water which was a pond, but which, being situate in the Westhope domain, profited by the generally aristocratic nature of its surroundings and was called a lake, lying about half a mile from the house. A large tent had been pitched on the bank, and as of course it was impossible to have any regular sit-down luncheon, refreshments were perpetually going on, "snacks" were indulged in between the performance of wild evolutions given out to be quadrilles, and gone through to the music of the military band, which, with very blue cheeks and very stiff fingers, was playing on the bank, and the consumption of liquids, from champagne in tumblers to curaçoa in wine-glasses, was tremendous.
The party from Westhope had driven down in a break, in which a seat had been offered to Walter Joyce by Lady Hetherington herself, who had condescended to visit the library for the express purpose. It happened, however, that the secretary was specially engaged on an important letter, which it was necessary should be despatched that day, so that he was compelled to ask to be allowed to find his own way to the lake. When he arrived, there was already a large gathering, the bank was lined with spectators, and there was a tolerably large number of skaters. Lord Hetherington, wrapped in an enormous fur coat, with a hood hanging half-way down his back, was standing looking on with a somewhat melancholy expression. It had just occurred to him that skating was a pleasant pastime, that to skate well was a thing of which a man might reasonably be proud; at the same time he realised the fact that it was a thing impossible to be done by proxy--he could not get any man to skate for him and give him the credit of it. Colonel Tapp, cleaner shaved and waxier moustached than ever, stood by his lordship. The colonel did not skate--not that he could not; in his youth he had been a proficient in the art, but he was not in his youth now, and was so strapped, and busked, and laced into his various garments, outer and inner, that he feared if by mischance he fell it might either be impossible for him to get up at all, or something might give way and cause him to be raised in a limp and unpresentable condition. Mr. Biscoe had no such qualms, and was buckling on his skates with all his characteristic impetuosity--old-fashioned skates, cumbrous with woodwork, and with curly tops, very different from the light and elegant trifles in which handsome little Mr. Boyd was performing all sorts of figures before the countess and a group of ladies gathered together on the bank, and trying to look as if they were interested and amused.
"Charmin' scene!" said Lord Hetherington, surveying the lake in a birdlike fashion, with his head on one side. "Quite charmin'! Whenever I see ice and that kind of thing, always reminds me of some humorous adventures I once read in a book 'bout man on the ice; Pickwinkle, or some such name. 'Commonly humorous book, to be sure!" and his lordship laughed very heartily at his reminiscences.
"You mean Pickwick, my lord," said the colonel. "Ah! hope what happened to him won't happen to any of our party, specially our fair friends who are pirouetting away there so prettily. If you recollect the ice broke and Mr. Pickwick got a ducking. How's the ice, Boyd?" to the boy who came spinning to the edge at the moment.
"First class, colonel; couldn't be in better form; it's as hard as nails and as slippery as--as old boots," said Mr. Boyd, after hesitating an instant for an appropriate simile.
"Ah! but just keep up this end, will you?" said Mr. Biscoe, looking up, his face purple with the exertion of pulling at a refractory strap. "I was past here yesterday morning and saw that at the other end the men had broken up the ice for the deer or the waterfowl, and consequently what's there is only last night's frost, binding together the floating bits of yesterday, and likely to be very rotten."
"Better have a board with 'Dangerous' or somethin' of that sort written on it and stuck up, hadn't we?" suggested Lord Hetherington, with Serpentine reminiscences.
"Scarcely time to get one prepared, my lord," replied Mr. Biscoe, with a slight smile. "Here, two of you men take a rope and lay it across the ice just below that alder tree--that'll warn 'em; and you, Boyd, tell 'em all to keep above that line. No good having any bother if one can prevent it." And Mr. Biscoe hobbled down the bank and shot away across the lake, returning in an instant, and showing that if his skates were old-fashioned, he could keep pace with any of the young ones notwithstanding.
"Nice exercise--very," said the colonel, who was getting so cold that he was almost prepared to risk the chance of a tumble, and "have a pair on." "I do like to see a woman skating; there's something in it that's--ah!" and the old colonel kissed the tips of his fingers, partly to warm them, partly to express his admiration. "Now, who is that in the brown velvet trimmed with fur?--she seems to know all about it."
"That's my sister Caroline," said his lordship, looking through his double glass. "Yes, she skates capitally, don't she? Pretty dress, too; looks like those people in the pictures outside the polkas, don't it? Who's---- Oh, Mr. Joyce! How d'ye do, Mr. Joyce? My secretary; very decent young man, that."
The colonel merely coughed behind his buckskin glove. He did not think much of secretaries, and shared Jack Cade's opinion in regard to the professors of the arts of reading and writing. Just then Lady Caroline approached the bank.
"Colonel, are you inclined to back the service in general and your own regiment in particular? Mr. Patey and I are going to have a race. Of course he gives me a long start. Will you bet?"
"Too delighted to have the chance of losing," said the colonel with old-fashioned gallantry. "And I'll give odds, too--a dozen pairs to half-a-dozen.--Patey, sustain the credit of the corps in every particular."
"Depend on me, colonel," said Mr. Patsy, a long-limbed lieutenant of untiring wind. "Mr. Boyd, take Lady Caroline to her place, and then start us."
Walter Joyce had heard none of this colloquy. He had joined Mr. Biscoe, with whom he had formed a great friendship, and was showing him how to shift from the outer edge of an "eight," and shoot off into a "spread eagle,"--an intricate movement requiring all your attention,--when he heard a sharp crack, followed by a loud shout. Without a word they dashed off to the other end of the lake where the crowd was greatest. Joyce arrived first. What he saw was a large pool of water where ice had been; floating on it a small round velvet cap trimmed with fur. He looked hastily round. She was not there--then he knew what had occurred.
At that instant his arm was seized by Mr. Biscoe, who whispered--
"Wait, man! They're fetching the rope!"
"Stand back," he cried, "it'd be too late! Let me go!" and the next instant he was diving beneath the floating fragments of the ice.
"It was as near as a toucher," Mr. Boyd said; and he was right. When they pulled him in, Joyce's arm, which had been wound round Lady Caroline, had nearly given way, and the hand with which he had clung to the ice-edge was all bruised and bleeding. Just as they were lifted on shore he thought he saw her lips move. He bent his head, and heard one word--"Walter!"--then he fainted.