Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/420

410[April 3, 1869] her book on to her lap and looking up languidly.

"They told me you were ill, or I don't know that I should have come," retorted Lady Hetherington, with some asperity.

"Ah, that was quite right of them; I told them to say that. You can go, Phillips"—to the maid—"I'll ring when I want you. I don't suppose there's any harm in sending mendacious messages by the servants, do you? It would be far more demoralising to them if one were to tell the truth and say one was lazy, and that kind of thing, because it would provoke their contempt instead of their pity, and fill them with horrible revolutionary ideas that there was no reason why they shouldn't be lazy as well as we, and all sorts of dreadful things."

"If I had thought it was mere laziness that kept you to your room this morning, Caroline, I think my 'dislike of taking trouble in a general way' would have influenced me in this particular instance, and saved you the bore of my interrupting you."

"That's where you're so ungenerous, Margaret! Not the smallest bore in the world; the stupidity of this book, and Phillips's action with the hair-brush, combined, were sending me off to sleep, and you interfered at an opportune moment to rescue me. How is West, this morning?"

"Very much as he was last night. Intent on distinguishing himself on this—what do you call it? irrigation scheme."

"Oh dear, still harping on those channels and pipes and all the rest of it! Poor Mr. Joyce, there is plenty of work in store for him, poor fellow!"

"Dreadful, will it not be? for that charming young man to be compelled to work, to earn his wages!" said Lady Hetherington, with a sneer.

Lady Caroline looked up, half-astonished, half-defiant. "Salary, not wages, Margaret!" she said, after a moment's pause.

"Salary, then!" said her ladyship, shortly; "it's all the same thing!"

"No, dear, it isn't! Salary isn't wages; just as the pin-money which West allows you isn't hire! You see the difference, dear?"

"I see that you're making a perfect fool of yourself, with regard to this man!" exclaimed Lady Hetherington, thoroughly roused.

"What man?" asked Lady Caroline, in all apparent simplicity.

"What man? Why this Mr. Joyce! And I think, Caroline, that if you choose to forget your own position, you ought to think of us, and have some little regard for decency, at all events so long as you're staying in our house!"

"All right, dear!" said Lady Caroline, with perfect coolness. "I'm sorry that my conduct gives you offence, but the remedy is easy: I'll tell West how you feel about it at luncheon, and I'll leave your house before dinner!"

A home thrust, as Lady Caroline well knew. The only time that Lord Hetherington during his life had managed to pluck up a spirit, was on the occasion of some real or fancied slight offered by his wife to his sister. Tail-lashings and roarings, and a display of fangs are expected from the tiger, if, as the poet finely puts it, "it is his nature to." But when the mild and inoffensive sheep paws the ground and makes ready for an onslaught with his head, it is the more terrible because it is so unexpected. Lord Hetherington's assertion of his dignity and his rights on the one occasion in question was so tremendous that her ladyship never forgot it, and she was extremely unwilling to go through such another scene. So her manner was considerably modified, and her voice considerably lowered in tone, as she said:

"No, but really, Caroline, you provoke me in saying things which you know I don't mean! You are so thoughtless and headstrong"

"I never was cooler or calmer in my life! You complain of my conduct in your house! It would be utterly beneath me to defend that conduct, it requires no defence, so I take the only alternative left, and quit your house!"

"No; but Caroline, can't you see"

"I can see this, Lady Hetherington, and I shall mention it once for all! You have never treated that gentleman, Mr. Joyce, as he ought to be treated. He is a gentleman in mind, and thought, and education; and he comes here, and does for poor dear stupid West what West is totally unable to do himself, and yet is most anxious to have the credit of. The position which Mr. Joyce holds is a most delicate one, one which he fills most delicately, but one which any man with a less acute sense of honour and right might use to his own advantage, and to bring ridicule on his employer. Don't fancy I'm hard on dear old West in saying this; if he's your husband, he's my brother, and you can't be more