| "The story of our Lives from Year to Year"
All the Year Round | ||
| No. 16. New Series. | Saturday, March 20, 1869. | Price Twopence. |
Wrecked in Port.
A Serial Story by the Author of "Black Sheep."
Book II.
Chapter VI.The Rubicon.
Of course Walter Joyce was a hero of heroes for days after the ice-accident. Lady Hetherington for the time being threw off every semblance of insolence and patronage, complimented him in the highest terms on his bravery and presence of mind, and assured him that he had established a claim upon their gratitude which they could never repay. Lord Hetherington was visibly affected, and had great difficulty in thanking his sister's preserver in anything like a coherent manner, lapsing into wild outbursts of "Don't you know!" and explaining that it would be impossible for him to express the feelings and that kind of thing, under which he laboured. The gentlemen from the barracks, who had hitherto regarded "old Hetherington's secretary-fellow" as a person utterly unworthy of notice, began to think that they had been mistaken. Young Patey sent a short account of the incident to the sporting paper of which he was an esteemed correspondent, and made a mental note to ask Joyce to play in a football match which was about to come off, and of which he had the direction. Colonel Tapp not merely assisted in carrying Joyce's senseless body to the tent, whereby he became much damped with drippings, which he nobly ignored, but sent off one of the men for the surgeon of the depôt, and evinced an amount of interest and attention, very rare in the self-contained old warrior. Mr. Biscoe said very little indeed; he had been the only person close to the ridge of the broken ice, and he might have heard what Lady Caroline whispered in Joyce's ear, and he might have formed his own opinion of how matters stood from what he saw then. But he said nothing. His lips wreathed into a peculiar smile two or three times in the course of the evening, but nothing escaped them, and as he was smoking his after-dinner cigar in his study, he chuckled in a manner which was not to be accounted for by the perusal of anything in the Guardian which he was supposed to be reading, more especially as he dropped his eyeglass, laid down the paper, and rubbed his hands with intense enjoyment. Just before he dropped asleep, he said, "It's a thousand pities Joyce is not in orders! He'd have had Chudleigh Rectory when old Whiting goes, as safe as possible: old Whiting can't live long, and Chudleigh must be worth twelve hundred a year!"
"Mr. Joyce have Chudleigh? Why should he have had Chudleigh? What makes you think that, Robert?" asked the partner of his joys, from the neighbouring pillow.
"Ah! what indeed?" was all the answer Robert made, and was snoring in an instant.
What did Lady Caroline herself say? Very little. She had a slight access of fever for three days, and kept her room for a week. The first time Joyce saw her was in the library where he was at work. She came across the room with outstretched hand, and in a few very simple words told him she owed her life to him, and had come to tell him so, and to thank him for it. She was looking wonderfully beautiful; Joyce thought he had never seen her to such advantage. The usual pallor of her cheeks was relieved by a deep rose flush, her violet eyes were more than ever luminous, and she had departed from her usual
