Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/421

Charles Dickens] jealous of his name than I am! But it's best to be plainspoken about the matter now, it may save some serious difficulties hereafter. And how do you treat this gentleman? Until I spoke to you some months since, you ignored his presence; although he was domesticated in your house, you scarcely knew his personal appearance. Since then you bow and give him an occasional word, but you're not half so polite to him as you are to the quadrille-bandsman when he is in much request, or to the Bond-street librarian when stalls for some particular performance are scarce. I am different; I am sick to death of 'us' and 'our set,' and our insipid fade ways, and our frightful conventionality and awful dulness! Our men are even more odious than our women, and that's saying a good deal; their conversation varies between insolence and inanity, and as they dare not talk the first to me, they're compelled to fall back on the second. When I meet this gentleman, I find him perfectly well-bred, perfectly at his ease, with a modest assurance which is totally different from the billiard-table swagger of the men of the day; perfectly respectful, full of talk on interesting topics, never for an instant pressing himself unduly forward, or forgetting that he is, what he is, a gentleman! I find a charm in his society; I acknowledge it; I have never sought to disguise it! The fact that he saved my life, at the hazard of his own, does not tend to depreciate him in my eyes! And then, because I like him and have the honesty to say so, I am bid to 'think of' my relations, and 'have regard for decency!' A little too much, upon my word!"

People used to admire Lady Caroline's flashing eyes, but her sister-in-law had never seen them flash so brilliantly before, nor had her voice, even when singing its best, ever rung so keenly clear. For once in her life, Lady Hetherington was completely put down and extinguished; she muttered something about "not having meant anything," as she made her way to the door, and immediately afterwards she disappeared.

"That woman is quite too rude!" said Lady Caroline to herself, ringing the bell as soon as the door closed behind her sister-in-law. "If she thinks to try her tempers on me, she will find herself horribly mistaken. One sufferer is quite enough in a family, and poor West must have the entire monopoly of my lady's airs! Now, Phillips, please to go on brushing my hair!"

Meantime, the cause of all this commotion and outbreak between these two ladies, Walter Joyce, utterly unconscious of the excitement he was creating, was pursuing the even tenor of his way as calmly as the novel circumstances of his position would admit. Of course, with the chance of an entire change in his life hanging over him—a change involving marriage, residence in a foreign country, and an occupation which was almost entirely strange to him—it was not possible for him to apply his mind unreservedly to the work before him. Marian's face would keep floating before him instead of the lovely countenance of Eleanor de Sackville, erst maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth, who had this in common with Marmion's friend, Lady Heron, that fame "whispered light tales" of her. Instead of Westhope, as it was in the old days, with its fosse, drawbridge, portcullis, ramparts, and all the mediævalisms which it was in duty bound to have, Walter's fancy was endeavouring to realise to itself the modern city of Berlin, on the river Spree, while his brain was busied in conjecturing the nature of his forthcoming duties, and in wondering whether he possessed the requisite ability for executing them. Yes! he could get through them, and not merely that, but do them well, do anything well, with Marian by his side. Brightened in every possible way by the prospect before him, better even in health and certainly in spirits, he looked back with wonder on his past few months' career; he could not understand how he had been so calm, so unexpectant, so unimpassioned. He could not understand how the only real hopes and fears of his life, those with which Marian was connected, had fallen into a kind of quiescent state, which he had borne with and accepted. He could not understand that now, when the hopes had been aroused and sent springing within him, and the fears had been banished, at least for a while. For a while! for ever! the mere existence of any fear was an injustice to

Marian! She had been true, and steadfast, and good, and loving. She had proved it nobly enough. The one weakness which formed part of her character, an inability to contend with poverty—a venial failing enough, Walter Joyce thought, especially in a girl who must have known, more particularly in one notable instance, the sad results of want of means—would never now be tried. There would be no need for her to struggle, no necessity for pinching and screwing. Accustomed since his childhood to live on the poorest pittance, Joyce looked at the salary now offered to him as real