Part 68

"'Oh yes, Miss Royce, very fond of her indeed; she's poor, she's of no family, she's Miss Nobody of Nowhere, you know; she's all that I am, except that she has a right to her honest father's name--'

"'Does she know you're very fond of her?'

"'No; but I hope to tell her so some day.'

"Then we were silent, and I felt very red, and very much inclined to cry, but I managed to keep in my tears.

"Then I got up, and so did he--and he made some joke about Grissel and the loch-bottle; and we both laughed quite naturally and looked at the pictures, and he told me he was going back to London with the Gibsons that very week, and thanked me warmly for my kind interest in him, and assured me he thoroughly deserved it--and talked so funnily and so nicely that I quite forgave myself. I really don't think he guessed for one moment what I had been driving at all the while; I got back all my self-respect; I felt so grateful to him that I was fonder of him than ever, though no longer so idiotically in love. He was not for me. He had somehow laughed me into love with him, and laughed me out of it.

"Then I bade him good-bye, and squeezed his hand with all my heart, and told him how much I should like some day to meet Miss Gibson and be her friend if she would let me.

"Then I went back to Riffrath and took mamma her loch; but she no longer wanted it, for I told her I had changed my mind about Freddy, and that cured her like magic; and she kissed me on both cheeks and called me her dear, darling, divine Julia. Poor, sweet mamma!

"I had given her many a bad quarter of an hour, but this good moment made up for them all.

"She was eighty-two last birthday, and can still read Josselin's works in the cheap edition without spectacles--thanks, no doubt, to the famous Doctor Hasenclever! She reads nothing else!

"Et voilà comment ça s'est passé.

"It's I that'll be the proud woman when I read this letter, printed, in your life of Josselin.

"Yours sincerely,

"Julia Ironsides.

"P. S.--I've actually just told mamma--and I'm still her dear, darling, divine Julia!"

* * * * *

Charming as were Barty's remembrances of Düsseldorf, the most charming of all was his remembrance of going aboard the little steamboat bound for Rotterdam, one night at the end of May, with old Mrs. Bletchley, Mrs. Gibson and her daughter, and my sister Ida.

The little boat was crowded; the ladies found what accommodation they could in what served for a ladies' cabin, and expostulated and bribed their best; fortunately for them, no doubt, there were no English on board to bribe against them.

Barty spent the night on deck, supine, with a carpet-bag for a pillow; we will take the full moon for granted. From Düsseldorf to Rotterdam there is little to see on either side of a Rhine steamboat, except the Rhine--especially at night.

Next day, after breakfast, he made the ladies as comfortable as he could on the after-deck, and read to them from Maud, from the Idylls of the King, from the Mill on the Floss. Then windmills came into sight--Dutch windmills; then Rotterdam, almost too soon. They went to the big hotel on the Boompjes and fed, and then explored Rotterdam, and found it a most delightful city.

Next day they got on board the steamboat bound for St. Katharine's wharf; the wind had freshened and they soon separated, and met at breakfast next morning in the Thames.

Barty declared he smelt Great Britain as distinctly as one can smell a Scotch haggis, or a Welsh rabbit, or an Irish stew, and the old familiar smell made him glad. However little you may be English, if you are English at all you are more English than anything else, et plus royaliste que le Roi!

According to Heine, an Englishman loves liberty as a good husband loves his wife; that is also how he loves the land of his birth; at all events, England has a kind of wifely embrace for the home-coming Briton, especially if he comes home by the Thames.

It is not unexpected, nor madly exciting, perhaps; but it is singularly warm and sweet if the conjugal relations have not been strained in the meanwhile. And as the Thames narrows itself, the closer, the more genial, the more grateful and comforting this long-anticipated and tenderly intimate uxorious dalliance seems to grow.

Barty felt very happy as he stood leaning over the bulwarks in the sunshine, between Ida and Leah, and looked at Rotherhithe, and promised himself he would paint it some day, and even sell the picture!

Then he made himself so pleasant to the custom-house officers that they all but forgot to examine the Gibson luggage.

Was I delighted to grasp his hand at St. Katharine's wharf, after so many months? Ah!...

Mr. Gibson was there, funny as ever, and the Gibsons went home with him to Conduit Street in a hired fly. Alas! poor Mrs. Gibson's home-coming was the saddest part for her of the delightful little journey.

And Barty and Ida and I went our own way in a four-wheeler to eat the fatted calf in Brunswick Square, washed down with I will not say what vintage. There were so many available from all the wine-growing lands of Europe that I've forgotten which was chosen to celebrate the wanderers' return!