WRECKED IN PORT.

A SERIAL STORY BY THE AUTHOR OF "BLACK SHEEP."

BOOK III.

CHAPTER 1. IN HARNESS.

IT was the autumn of the year, in the
spring of which Walter Joyce had returned
to London from Westhope. Six months
had elapsed since he had read, what he had
almost imagined to be his death-warrant
in Marian's reply to his letter containing
the Berlin proposal. It was not his death-
warrant; he had survived the shock, and,
indeed, had borne the disappointment in a
way that he did not think possible when
the blow first fell upon him. Under the
blessed, soothing influence of time, under
the perhaps more effectual influence of
active employment, his mind had been
weaned from dwelling on that dread blank
which, as he at first imagined, was to have
been his sole outlook for the future. He
was young, and strong, and impressionable;
he returned to London inclined to be
misanthropical and morose, disposed to
believe in the breaking of hearts and the
crushing of hopes, and the rather pleasant
sensations of despair. But after a very
short sojourn in the metropolis, he was
compelled to avow to himself the wisdom
of Lady Caroline Mansergh's prognostications
concerning him, and the absolute
truth of everything she had said. A life
of moping, of indulgence in preposterous
cynicism and self-compassion, was not
for him; he was meant for far better
things—action in the present, distinction in
the future—those were to be his aims, and,
after a fortnight's indolence and moodiness,
he had flung himself into the work that
was awaiting, and began to labour at it
with all his energy and all his brainpower.

Some little time afterwards, when Joyce
thought over his mental condition in those
first days of his return to London, the
cheap cynicism, the pettishness, and the
languor which he had suffered to possess
him, he wondered within himself why old
Jack Byrne, with whom he had taken up his
quarters, had not rebuked him for it, and
one day, with some considerable confusion,
he asked the old man the reason.

"Why didn't I speak to you about it,
and pitch into you for it, my boy?" said
the old man, with his peculiar soft laugh.
"Because it's best to let some things have
their run, and come to a stop of their own
accord. I saw plainly enough what would
be the result of that love business, long ago,
when you first told me of it. Why didn't
I say so then? Why, you don't imagine I
should have attempted to influence you in
such a matter, when I had never even seen
the lady, and had only general experience
to take as my guide? I did give you as
many hints as I thought prudent or decent
in a letter which I wrote to you, my lad;
but you didn't seem to profit by them
much, or, indeed, to take any heed of
them. You went sailing away straight
and smoothly enough until that squall
came down upon you and carried away
your masts and your rigging, and left you
a helpless log tossing on the waters. It
was so nice to be a helpless log, wasn't it?
—so nice, that you thought you would
never be anything else. But, God bless you,
I knew differently; I'd seen the same case
a hundred times before, and I knew if you
were left alone you would come all right
in time. And now you have come all right,
and you're doing your work well, and they
think highly of you at the Comet office."