Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/492

482[April 24, 1869] thing that people were not allowed to read each other's letters! Her ladyship told the butler to see that that letter was sent at once to Mr. Joyce, who was in the library, expecting it.

The Westhope household was eminently well drilled, and the footman, who handed the letter on the salver to Mr. Joyce, was as respectful as though the secretary were my lord himself. He had heard Lady Caroline's remark to the butler, and had turned the missive over and scrutinised it as he carried it along the passages. The handwriting of the address, though firm, was unmistakably feminine, and the footman, a man of the world, coupling this fact with what he had heard, arrived at the conclusion that the letter was from Mr. Joyce's "young woman." He walked up to Joyce, who was busily engaged in writing, croaked out, "A letter, sir," in the tone usually adopted by him to offer to dinner-guests their choice between hock and champagne, and watched the secretary's manner. Joyce took the letter from the salver, muttered his thanks, and turned back to his work. The footman bowed and left the room with the idea, as he afterwards remarked to the butler, that if his suppositions were correct, the secretary was not "a fellow of much warmth of feelin'; looked at it and put it down by his arm as though it was a bill, he did!"

But when the door had shut behind the retreating figure of the Mercury in plush, Walter Joyce threw down his pen and took up the letter, and pressed it to his lips. Then he opened it, not eagerly indeed, but with a bright light in his eyes, and a happy smile upon his lips. And then he read it. He started at the first line, astonished at the cold tone in which Marian addressed him, but after that he read the letter straight through, without evincing any outward sign of emotion. When he had finished it he paused, and shook his head quickly, as one who has received some stunning blow, and passed his hand rapidly across his brow, then set to work to read the letter again. He had been through it hurriedly before, but this time he read every word, then he pushed the paper from him, and flung himself forward on the desk, burying his face in his hands. Thus he remained during some ten minutes; when he raised himself his face was very white save round the eyes, where the skin was flushed and strained, and his hands trembled very much. He reeled, too, a little when he first stood up, but he soon conquered that, and began silently pacing the room to and fro. Some time afterwards, when asked to explain what he had felt at that crisis in his life, Joyce declared he could not tell. Not anger against Marian, certainly, no vindictive rage against her who had treated him so basely. His life was spoiled, he felt that; it had never been very brilliant, or very much worth having, but the one ray which had illumined it had been suddenly extinguished, and the future was in utter darkness. He was in the condition of a man who has been stunned, or has fainted, and to whom the recollection of the events immediately engrossing his attention when, as it were, he was last in life, came but slowly. He had but a confused idea of the contents of Marian's letter. Its general tenor of course he knew, but he had to think over the details. The letter was there, lying before him on the desk where he had thrown it, but he seemed to have an odd but invincible repugnance to reading it again. After a somewhat laborious process of thought he remembered it all. She was going to be married to Mr. Creswell—that was it. She could not face a life of poverty, she said; the comforts and luxuries which she had enjoyed for the last few months had become necessary to her happiness, and she had chosen between him and them. She did not pretend to care for the man she was about to marry, she merely intended to make use of him as the means to an end. Poor Marian! that was a bad state for her to be in—poor Marian! She had jilted him, but she had sacrificed herself: he did not know which was the more forlorn out-look.

Yes, it was all over for him! Nothing mattered much now! Copy out anecdotes from the family chronicles, hunt up antiquities and statistics for those speeches with which Lord Hetherington intended to astonish the world in the forthcoming session, settle down as librarian and secretary for as long as this noble family would have him, and when they kicked him out live by literary hack work until he found another noble family ready to receive him in the old capacity for a hundred and fifty pounds a year—why not? He smiled grimly to himself as he thought of the Berlin proposition, and how astonished old Byrne would be when he wrote to decline it, for he should decline it at once. He had thought about it so often and so much, he had allowed his imagination to feast him with such pictures of himself established there with Marian by his side, that he felt utterly unable to face the dark blank