Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/495

Charles Dickens] "What would you have me do, Lady Caroline? You sneer at the notion of my remaining with Lord Hetherington! Surely you would not have me go to Berlin?"

"I never sneer at anything, my dear Mr. Joyce! Sneering shows very bad breeding! I say distinctly that I think you would be mad to fritter away your days in your present position. Nor do I think, under circumstances, you ought to go to Berlin. It would have done very well as a stepping-stone had things turned out differently, but now you would be always drawing odious comparisons between your solitary lot and the 'what might have been,' as Owen Meredith so sweetly puts it."

"Where, then, shall I go?"

"To London! Where else should any one go with a desire to make a mark in the world, and energy and determination to aid him in accomplishing his purpose? And this is your case. Ah, you may shake your head, but I tell you it is! You think differently just now, but when once you are there, 'in among the throngs of men,' you will acknowledge it! Why, when you were there, at the outset of your career, utterly friendless and alone, as you have told me, you found friends and work, and now that you are known, and by a certain few appreciated, do you think it will be otherwise?"

"You are marvellously inspiriting, Lady Caroline, and I can never be sufficiently grateful for the advice you have given me,—better still for the manner in which you have given it. But, suppose I do go to London, what—in the cant phrase of the day—what am I to 'go in for'?"

"Newspaper writing—what do they call it?—journalism, at first, the profession in which you were doing so well when you came here. That, if I mistake not, will in due course lead to something else, about which we will talk at some future time."

"That is just what I was coming to, Lady Caroline! You will allow me to see you sometimes?"

"I shall be always deeply interested in your welfare, Mr. Joyce, and anxious to know how you progress! Oh, yes, I hope both to see and hear a great deal of you. Besides, Lord Hetherington may feel inclined to take up the Chronicles again; he is rather off them just now, I know—and then you can give your successor some very valuable hints!"

When Lady Caroline Mansergh was alone in her own room after this conversation, she reflected long and deeply upon the effect which the receipt of that letter would probably produce upon Walter Joyce, and was sufficiently interested to analyse her own feelings in regard to it. Was she sorry or glad that the intended match had been broken off, and that Joyce was now, so far as his heart was concerned, a free man? That he was free she was certain; that he would never return to the old allegiance she was positive. Lady Caroline in her worldly experience had frequently come across cases of the kind, where the tender regret which at first forbade any harsh mention, scarcely any harsh thought of the false one, had in a very short time given place to a feeling of mortified vanity and baffled desire, which prompted the frankest outpourings, and made itself heard in the bitterest objurgations. The question was, how it affected her. On the whole, she thought that she was pleased at the result. She did not attempt to hide from herself that she had a certain regard for this young man, though of the nature of that regard she had scarcely troubled herself to inquire. One thing she knew, that it was very different from what she had at first intended it should be, from what in the early days of their acquaintance she had allowed it to be. Of course with such a man flirtation, in its ordinary sense, was out of the question; she would as soon have thought of flirting with the Great Pyramid as with Walter Joyce. In its place there had existed a kind of friendly interest, but Lady Caroline was fully cognisant that, on her side, that friendly interest had been deepening and strengthening until, after a little self-examination, she felt forced to confess to herself that it would bear another name. Then came the question, and if it did, what matter? She had never particularly set herself up as a strict observant of the conventionalities or the fetish worship of Society; on the contrary, her conduct in that respect had been rather iconoclastic. There need be no surprise, therefore, on the part of the world if she chose to marry out of what was supposed to be her "set" and station in Society; and if there had been, she was quite strong-minded enough to laugh at it. But to a woman of Lady Caroline's refinement it was necessary that her husband should be a gentleman, and it was necessary for her pride that, if not her equal in rank, he should not merely be her superior in talent, but should be admitted to be so. Under the fresh disposition of circumstances she saw no reason why this should not be.