Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/424

414[April 3, 1869] "Well then, put it that her mother's health—which you told me was ailing—was such as to prevent her from undertaking so long and serious a journey, and that she thought it her duty to remain by her mother"

Forsaking all other, and cleaving only unto him, quoted Joyce, with gravity.

"Yes, yes, my dear Mr. Joyce, very proper; but not the way of the world now-a-days; besides, I'm sure you would not be selfish enough to have the old lady left behind amongst strangers. However, grant it hypothetically—would you still take up this appointment?"

"I cannot possibly say," replied Joyce, after a moment's pause. "The idea is quite new to me. I have never given it consideration."

"I think I should, under any circumstances, if I were you," said Lady Caroline, earnestly, and looking hard at him. "You have talent, energy, and patience, the three great requisites for success, and you are, or I am very much mistaken, intended for a life of action. I do not advise you to continue in the course now opening to you. Even if you start for it, it should be made but a stepping-stone to a higher and a nobler career."

"And that is?"

"Politics! Plunged in them you forget all smaller things, forget the petty disappointments and discouragements which we all have equally to contend with, whatever may be our lot in life, and wonder that such trivial matters ever caused you annoyance! Wedded to them, you want no other tie; ambition takes the place of love, is a thousand times more absorbing, and in most cases offers a far more satisfactory reward. You seem to me eminently suited for such a career, and if you were to take my advice, you will seek an opportunity for embracing it."

"You would not have me throw away the substance for the shadow? You forget that the chance of my life is now before me!"

"I am by no means so certain that it is the chance of your life, Mr. Joyce! I am by no means certain that it is for the best that this offer has been made to you, or that the result will prove as you imagine. But, in any case, you should think seriously of entering on a political career. Your constant cry has been on a matter on which we have always quarrelled, and a reference to which on your part very nearly sent me off just now, you will harp upon the difference of social position; now distinction in politics levels all ranks. The two leaders of political parties in the present day, who really have pas and precedence over the highest in the land, who are the dispensers of patronage, and the cynosures of the world, are men sprung from the people. There is no height to which the successful politician may not attain."

"Perhaps not," said Joyce. "But I confess I am entirely devoid of ambition!"

"You think so now, but you will think differently some day, perhaps. It is a wonderfully useful substitute."

"Would you advise me to speak to Lord Hetherington about my intentions?"

"I think not, just yet, seeing that you scarcely know what your intentions are. I think I would wait until after Wednesday. Good-bye, Mr. Joyce; I have gossiped away all my spare time, and my letters must wait till to-morrow. You will not fail to let me know when you receive your reply. I shall be most anxious to know."

"This country beauty is playing fast and loose with him," said Lady Caroline to herself, as the door closed behind her. "She is angling for a bigger fish, and he is so innocent, or so much in love—the same thing—as not to perceive it. Poor fellow! it will be an awful blow for him, but it will come, I feel certain."

it a cry, or a fact, that there is a large class of our population subsisting exclusively by dishonest means? Does the professed thief exist only in the diseased imagination of the police? Are the records of the Old Bailey and the Middlesex Sessions, of Millbank and Scotland Yard, ingenious fictions, or stern fact? It is well, in matters of this kind, that the truth should be held constantly and steadily before the public eye.

If Lord Kimberley's bill be objected to as going too far, or not far enough, well and good; but it is well that the public mind should be firmly impressed with the knowledge that the habitual criminal is an actual living fact, and is not to be asserted or explained away by any amount of statement, or by any process of unreason whatever. How he is to be dealt with, is another matter. That it is monstrous to endure the existence of a class of professional thieves, and to allow them to prey on society, unmolested, so long as they have the wit to avoid detection, is obvious. It would seem to be equally clear that in legislating to put a stop to this state of things, the feelings or wishes of the criminals themselves are about the last things we have to consider. Either the professed thief must work and live honestly, or, in