Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/613

 what was then the one light in my sufficiently dreary life. Fortune has given me the chance, I think, of returning the compliment, and I intend to do it."

Jack Byrne turned uneasily in his chair; it was evident that his sentiments were not in accord with those of his friend. After a minute's pause, he said, "Even supposing that the old eye for eye and tooth for tooth retribution were allowable—which I am by no means disposed to grant, especially where women are concerned—are you quite sure that in adopting it you are getting at what you wish to attain? You have never said so, but it must be as obvious to you, as it is to me, that Mrs. Creswell does not care for her husband. Do you think, then, she will be particularly influenced by a matter in which his personal vanity is alone involved?"

Joyce smiled somewhat grimly. "My dear old friend, it was Mrs. Creswell's ambition that dealt me what might have been my coup de grace. My anxiety about this contest at Brocksopp springs from my desire to wound Mrs. Creswell's ambition. My knowledge of that lady is sufficient to prove to me, as clearly as though I were in her most sacred confidence, that she is most desirous that her husband should be returned to Parliament. The few words that were dropped by that idiot Bokenham the other day, pointed to this, but I should have been sure of it if I had not heard them. After all, it is the natural result, and what might have been expected. During her poverty her prayer was for money. Money acquired, another want takes its place, and so it will be to the end of the chapter."

As Joyce ceased speaking there was a knock at the door, and Jack Byrne opening it, admitted young Mr. Harrington, the confidential clerk of Messrs. Potter and Fyfe. Young Mr. Harrington was festively attired in a garb of sporting cut, and wore his curved-rimmed hat on the top of his right ear, but there was an unusual, anxious look in his face, and he showed signs of great mental perturbation, not having, as he afterwards allowed to his intimate friends, "been so thoroughly knocked out of time since Magsman went a mucker for the Two Thou'." This perturbation was at once noticed by Mr. Byrne.

"Ah, Mr. Harrington," said he; "glad to see you, sir. Not looking quite so fresh as usual," he added, with a cynical grin. "What's the matter, nothing wrong in the great turf world, I trust? Sister to Saucebox has not turned out a roarer, or Billy Billingsgate broken down badly?"

"Thank you very much for your kind inquiries, Mr. Byrne," said Mr. Harrington, eyeing the old man steadily without changing a muscle of his face. "I'll not forget to score up one to you, sir, and I'll take care to repay you that little funniment on the first convenient opportunity. Just now, I've got something else in hand. Look here, let's stow this gaff! Mr. Joyce, my business is with you. The fact is, there is an awful smash-up at Brocksopp, and my governors want to see you at once."

"At Brocksopp?" said Joyce, with a start. "A smash at Brocksopp?"

"Yes," said Mr. Harrington. "The man that we were all depending on, young Mr. Bokenham, has come to grief."

"Dead?" exclaimed old Byrne.

"O no, not at all; political, rather than social grief, I should have said. The fact is, so far as we can make out, Lord and Lady Steppe—you know Lady Steppe, Mr. Joyce, or, at all events, your friend Shimmer of the Comet could tell you all about her, she was Miss Tentose in the ballet at the Lane—have persuaded our sucking senator to go to Egypt with them for the winter. Lady S.'s influence is great in that quarter I understand—so great that he pitches up Brocksopp, and lets us all slide!"

"Given up Brocksopp?" said old Byrne.

"Chucked up his cards, sir," said Harrington, "when the game was in his hand. My governors' people are regularly up a tree, cornered, and all that, so they want to see you, Mr. Joyce, at once, and have sent me to fetch you."

"To fetch him! Potter and Fyfe of Abingdon-street have sent you to fetch him!" cried old Byrne, in great excitement. "Walter, do you thinkdo you recollect what I said to you some time ago? Can it be that it's coming on now?"

Joyce made him no verbal reply, but he grasped his old friend's hand warmly, and immediately afterwards started off with Mr. Harrington in the hansom cab which that gentleman had waiting at the door.

The idea that had flashed through old Jack Byrne's mind, preposterously exaggerated as it had at first seemed to him, was nevertheless correct. When Joyce arrived at Messrs. Potter and Fyfe's office, he found there, not merely those gentlemen, but, with them, several of the leading members of the party, and a deputation of two or three Liberals from Brocksopp, with whom Joyce was acquainted. Mr. Moule and Mr. Spalding, nervously excited, stepped forward, and shook hands with the young man in