Wrecked in Port: A Novel

by Edmund Yates

"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 think--do you recollect what I said to you some time ago? Can it be that it's coming on now?"

Joyce made 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 forwards and shook hands with the young man in a jerky kind of manner. Immediately afterwards, backing again towards their chairs, on the extremest edge of which they propped themselves, they hid their hands in their coat-sleeves, and looked round in a furtive manner.

After a few formal speeches, Mr. Potter proceeded at once to business. Addressing Joyce, he said it was probably known to him that the gentleman on whom they had hitherto depended as a candidate for Brocksopp had thrown them over, and at the eleventh hour had left them to seek for another representative. In a few well-chosen and diplomatically rounded sentences, Mr. Potter pointed out that the task that Mr. Bokenham had imposed upon them was by no means so difficult a one as might have been imagined. Mr. Potter would not, he said, indulge in any lengthened speech. His business was simply to explain the wishes of those for whom he and his partner had the honour to act--here he looked towards the leaders of the party, who did not attempt to disguise the fact that they were growing rather bored by the Potterian eloquence--and those wishes were, in so many words, that Mr. Joyce should step into the place which Mr. Bokenham had left vacant.

One of the leaders of the party here manifesting an intention of having something to say, and wishing to say it, Mr. Fyfe promptly interposed with the remark that he should be able to controvert an assertion, which he saw his young friend Mr. Joyce about to make, to the effect that he would be unable to carry on the contest for want of means. He, Mr. Fyfe, was empowered to assert that old Mr. Bokenham was so enraged at his son's defalcation, which he believed to have been mainly brought about by Tory agency, Lord Steppe's father, the Earl of Stair, being a notoriously bigoted Blue, that he was prepared to guarantee the expenses of any candidate approved of by the party and by the town. Mr. Fyfe here pausing to take breath, the leader, who had been previously baulked, cut in with a neat expression of the party's approval of Mr. Joyce, and Mr. Spalding murmured a few incoherent words to the effect that during a life-long acquaintance with his young friend the people of Brocksopp had been in entire ignorance that he had anything in him, politically or otherwise, beyond book-learning, and that was the main reason for their wishing him to represent them in Parliament.

Although a faint dawning of the truth had come across him when Mr. Harrington announced young Bokenham's defection, Walter Joyce had no definite idea of the honour in store for him. Very modestly, and in very few words, he accepted the candidature, promising to use every exertion for the attainment of success. He was too much excited and overcome to enter into any elaborate discussion at that time. All he could do was to thank the leading members of the party for their confidence, to inform the parliamentary-agent firm that he would wait upon them the next day, and to assure Messrs. Spalding and Moule that the Liberals of Brocksopp would find him among them immediately. Did Walter Joyce falter for one instant in the scheme of retribution which he had foreshadowed, now that he was to be its exponent, now that the vengeance which he had anticipated was to be worked out by himself? No! On the contrary, he was more satisfied in being able to assure himself of the edge of the weapon, and of the strength of the arm by which the blow should be dealt.

"We calculated too soon upon the effect of young Bokenham's escapade, darling," said Mr. Creswell to his wife, on his return after a day in Brocksopp. "The field is by no means to be left clear to us. The walls of the town are blazing with the placards of a new candidate in the Liberal interest--a clever man, I believe--who is to have all the elder Bokenham's backing, and who, from previous connection, may probably have certain local interests of his own."

"Previous connection--local interest? Who can it be?" asked Marian.

"An old acquaintance of yours, I should imagine; at least, the name is familiar to me in connection with your father and the old days of Helmingham school. The signature to the address is 'Walter Joyce.'"