What Will He Do with It? Part 96

Darrell breathed a long sigh, rose slowly, took George's hand, pressed it warmly in both his own, and turned quickly and silently away. He paused in the deep recess where the gleam of the wintry sun shot through the small cas.e.m.e.nt, aslant and pale on the ma.s.sive wall: opening the lattice he looked forth on the old hereditary trees--on the Gothic church-tower--on the dark evergreens that belted his father's tomb.

Again he sighed, but this time the sigh had a haughty sound in its abrupt impatience; and George felt that words written must remain to strengthen and confirm the effect of words spoken. He had at least obeyed his uncle's wise injunction--he had prepared Darrell's mind to weigh the contents of a letter, which, given in the first instance, would perhaps have rendered Darrell's resolution not less stubborn, by increasing the pain to himself which the resolution already inflicted.

Darrell turned and looked towards George, as if in surprise to see him still lingering there.

"I have now but to place before you this letter from my uncle to myself; it enters into those details which it would have ill become me specially to discuss. Remember, I entreat you, in reading it, that it is written by your oldest friend--by a man who has no dull discrimination in the perplexities of life or the niceties of honour."

Darrell bowed his head in a.s.sent, and took the letter. George was about to leave the room.

"Stay," said Darrell, "'tis best to have but one interview--one conversation on the subject which has been just enforced on me; and the letter may need a comment or a message to your uncle." He stood hesitating, with the letter open in his hand; and, fixing his keen eye on George's pale and powerful countenance, said: "How is it that, with an experience of mankind which you will pardon me for a.s.suming to be limited, you yet read so wondrously the complicated human heart?"

"If I really have that gift," said George, "I will answer your question by another: Is it through experience that we learn to read the human heart--or is it through sympathy? If it be experience, what becomes of the Poet? If the Poet be born, not made, is it not because he is born to sympathise with what he has never experienced?"

"I see! There are born Preachers!"

Darrell reseated himself, and began Alban's letter. He was evidently moved by the Colonel's account of Lionel's grief, muttering to himself, "Poor boy!--but he is brave--he is young." When he came to Alban's forebodings on the effects of dejection upon the stamina of life, he pressed his hand quickly against his breast as if he had received a shock! He mused a while before he resumed his task; then he read rapidly and silently till his face flushed, and he repeated in a hollow tone, inexpressibly mournful: "Let the young man live, and the old name die with Guy Darrell. Ay, ay! see how the world sides with Youth! What matters all else so that Youth have its toy!" Again his eye hurried on impatiently till he came to the pa.s.sage devoted to Lady Montfort; then George saw that the paper trembled violently in his hand and that his very lips grew white. "'Serious apprehensions,'" he muttered. "I owe 'consideration to such a friend.' This man is without a heart!"

He clenched the paper in his hand without reading farther. "Leave me this letter, George; I will give an answer to that and to you before night." He caught up his hat as he spoke, pa.s.sed into the lifeless picture-gallery, and so out into the open air. George, dubious and anxious, gained the solitude of his own room, and locked the door.

CHAPTER III.

AT LAST THE GREAT QUESTION BY TORTURE IS FAIRLY APPLIED TO GUY DARRELL.

WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT? What will Guy Darrell do with the thought that weighs on his brain, rankles in his heart, perplexes his dubious conscience? What will he do with the Law which has governed his past life? What will he do with that shadow of A NAME which, alike in swarming crowds or in lonely burial-places, has spelled his eye and lured his step as a beckoning ghost? What will he do with the PRIDE from which the mask has been so rudely torn? What will he do with idols so long revered? Are they idols, or are they but symbols and images of holy truths? What will he do with the torturing problem, on the solution of which depend the honour due to consecrated ashes, and the rights due to beating hearts? There, restless he goes, the arrow of that question in his side--now through the broad waste lands--now through the dim woods, pausing oft with short quick sigh, with hand swept across his brow as if to clear away a cloud;--now s.n.a.t.c.hed from our sight by the evergreens round the tomb in that still churchyard--now emerging slow, with melancholy eyes fixed on the old roof-tree! What will he do with it? The Question of Questions, in which all Futurity is opened, has him on its rack. WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT? Let us see.

CHAPTER IV.

Immunis aram si tetigit ma.n.u.s, Non sumptuosa blandior hostia, Mollivit aversas Penates, Farre pio et saliente mica.--HORAT.

It is the grey of the evening. Fairthorn is sauntering somewhat sullenly along the banks of the lake. He has missed, the last three days, his walk with Sophy--missed the pleasing excitement of talking at her, and of the family in whose obsolete glories he considers her very interest an obtrusive impertinence. He has missed, too, his more habitual and less irritating conversation with Darrell. In short, altogether he is put out, and he vents his spleen on the swans, who follow him along the wave as he walks along the margin, intimating either their affection for himself, or their antic.i.p.ation of the bread-crumbs a.s.sociated with his image--by the amiable note, half snort and half grunt, to which change of time or climate has reduced the vocal accomplishments of those cla.s.sical birds, so pathetically melodious in the age of Moschus and on the banks of Cayster.

"Not a crumb, you unprincipled beggars," growled the musician. "You imagine that mankind are to have no other thought but that of supplying you with luxuries! And if you were asked, in a compet.i.tive examination, to define ME, your benefactor, you would say: 'A thing very low in the scale of creation, without wings or even feathers, but which Providence endowed with a peculiar instinct for affording nutritious and palatable additions to the ordinary aliment of Swans!' Ay, you may grunt; I wish I had you--in a pie!"

Slowly, out through the gap between yon grey crag and the thorn-tree, paces the doe, halting to drink just where the faint star of eve shoots its gleam along the wave. The musician forgets the swans and quickens his pace, expecting to meet the doe's wonted companion. He is not disappointed. He comes on Guy Darrell where the twilight shadow falls darkest between the grey crag and the thorn-tree.

"Dear Fellow Hermit," said Darrell, almost gaily, yet with more than usual affection in his greeting and voice, "you find me just when I want you. I am as one whose eyes have been strained by a violent conflict of colours, and your quiet presence is like the relief of a return to green. I have news for you, Fairthorn. You, who know more of my secrets than any other man, shall be the first to learn a decision that must bind you and me more together--but not in these scenes, d.i.c.k.

'Ibimus--ibimus!

--------------------Supremum Carpere iter, comites, parati!'"

"What do you mean, sir?" asked Fairthorn. "My mind always misgives me when I hear you quoting Horace. Some reflection about the certainty of death, or other disagreeable subjects, is sure to follow!"

"Death! No, d.i.c.k--not now. Marriage-bells and joy, d.i.c.k! We shall have a wedding!"

"What! You will marry at last! And it must be that beautiful Caroline Lyndsay! It must--it must! You can never love another! You know it, my dear, dear master. I shall see you, then, happy before I die."

"Tut, foolish old friend!" said Darrell, leaning his aria tenderly on Fairthorn's shoulder, and walking on slowly towards the house. "How often must I tell you that no Marriage-bells can ring for me!"

"But you have told me, too, that you went to Twickenham to steal a sight of her again; and that it was the sight of her that made you resolve to wed no one else. And when I have railed against her for fickleness, have you not nearly frightened me out of my wits, as if no one might rail against her but yourself? And now she is free--and did you not grant that she would not refuse your hand, and would be true and faithful henceforth? And yet you insist on being--granite."

"No, d.i.c.k, not granite; I wish I were."

"Granite and pride," persisted d.i.c.k, courageously. "If one chips a bit off the granite, one only breaks one's spade against the pride."

"Pride--you too!" muttered Darrell, mournfully; then aloud: "No, it is not pride now, whatever it might have been even yesterday. But I would rather be racked by all the tortures that pious inquisitors ever invented out of compa.s.sion for obstinate heretics, than condemn the woman I have so fatally loved to a penance the misery of which she cannot foresee. She would accept me?--certainly! Why! Because she thinks she owes me reparation--because she pities me. And my heart tells me that I might become cruel, and mean, and vindictive, if I were to live day by day with one who created in me, while my life was at noon, a love never known in its morn, and to feel that that love's sole return was the pity vouchsafed to the nightfall of my age. No; if she pitied, but did not love me, when, eighteen years ago, we parted under yonder beech-tree, I should be a dotard to dream that woman's pity mellows into love as our locks become grey, and Youth turns our vows into ridicule.

It is not pride that speaks here; it is rather humility, d.i.c.k. But we must not now talk of old age and bygones. Youth and marriage-bells, d.i.c.k! Know that, I have been for hours pondering how to reconcile with my old-fashioned notions dear Lionel's happiness. We must think of the living as well as the dead, d.i.c.k. I have solved the problem. I am happy, and so shall the young folks be."

"You don't mean to say that you will consent to--"

"Yes, to Lionel's marriage with that beautiful girl, whose parentage we never will ask. Great men are their own ancestors; why not sometimes fair women? Enough--I consent! I shall of course secure to my kinsman and his bride an ample fortune. Lionel will have time for his honeymoon before he departs for the wars. He will fight with good heart now, d.i.c.k.

Young folks of the present day cannot bear up against sorrow, as they were trained to do in mine. And that amiable lady who has so much pity for me has, of course, still more pity for a charming young couple for whose marriage she schemed, in order to give me a home, d.i.c.k. And rather than she should pine and fall ill, and--no matter; all shall be settled as it should be for the happiness of the living. But something else must be settled; we must think of the dead as well as the living; and this name of Darrell shall be buried with me in the grave beside my father's.

Lionel Haughton will keep to his own name. Live the Haughtons! Perish, but with no blot on their shield--perish the Darrells! Why, what is that? Tears, d.i.c.k? Pooh!--be a man! And I want all your strength; for you, too, must have a share in the sacrifice. What follows is not the dictate of pride, if I can read myself aright. No; it is the final completion and surrender of the object on which so much of my life has been wasted--but a surrender that satisfies my crotchets of honour.

At all events, if it be pride in disguise, it will demand no victim in others; you and I may have a sharp pang--we must bear it, d.i.c.k."

"What on earth is coming now?" said d.i.c.k, dolefully.

"The due to the dead, Richara Fairthorn. This nook of fair England, in which I learned from the dead to love honour--this poor domain of Fawley--shall go in bequest to the College at which I was reared."

"Sir!"

"It will serve for a fellowship or two to honest, bravehearted young scholars. It will be thus, while English inst.i.tutions may last, devoted to Learning and Honour. It may sustain for mankind some ambition more generous than mine, it appears, ever was--settled thus, not in mine, but my dear father's name, like the Darrell Museum. These are my dues to the dead, d.i.c.k! And the old house thus becomes useless. The new house was ever a folly. They must go down, both, as soon as the young folks are married;--not a stone stand on stone! The ploughshare shall pa.s.s over their sites! And this task I order you to see done. I have not strength.

You will then hasten to join me at Sorrento, that corner of earth on which Horace wished to breathe his last sigh.

'Ille to mec.u.m locus et beatae Postulant arces--ibi--tu '"

"Don't, sir, don't. Horace again! It is too much." Fairthorn was choking; but as if the idea presented to him was really too monstrous for belief, he clutched at Darrell with so uncertain and vehement a hand that he almost caught him by the throat, and sobbed out, "You must be joking."

"Seriously and solemnly, Richara Fairthorn," said Darrell, gently disentangling the fingers that threatened him with strangulation, "seriously and solemnly I have uttered to you my deliberate purpose. I implore you, in the name of our life-long friendship, to face this pain as I do--resolutely, cheerfully. I implore you to execute to the letter the instructions I shall leave with you on quitting England, which I shall do the day Lionel is married; and then, dear old friend, calm days, clear consciences:--In climes where whole races have pa.s.sed away--proud cities themselves sunk in graves--where our petty grief for a squirearch's lost house we shall both grow ashamed to indulge--there we will moralise, rail against vain dreams and idle pride, cultivate vines and orange trees, with Horace--nay, nay, d.i.c.k--with the FLUTE!"

CHAPTER V.

MORE BOUNTEOUS RUN RIVERS WHEN THE ICE THAT LOCKED THEIR FLOW MELTS INTO THEIR WATERS. AND WHEN FINE NATURES RELENT, THEIR KINDNESS Is SWELLED BY THE THAW.

Darrell escaped into the house; Fairthorn sunk upon the ground, and resigned himself for some minutes to unmanly lamentations. Suddenly he started up; a thought came into his brain--a hope into his breast. He made a caper--launched himself into a precipitate zig-zag--gained the hall-door-plunged into his own mysterious hiding-place--and in less than an hour re-emerged, a letter in his hand, with which he had just time to catch the postman, as that functionary was striding off from the back yard with the official bag.

This exploit performed, Fairthorn shambled into his chair at the dinner-table, as George Morley concluded the grace which preceded the meal that in Fairthorn's estimation usually made the grand event of the pa.s.sing day. But the poor man's appet.i.te was gone. As Sophy dined with Waife, the Morleys alone shared, with host and secretary, the melancholy entertainment. George was no less silent than Fairthorn; Darrell's manner perplexed him. Mrs. Morley, not admitted into her husband's confidence in secrets that concerned others, though in all his own he was to her conjugal sight _pellucidior vitro_, was the chief talker; and being the best woman in the world, ever wishing to say something pleasant, she fell to praising the dear old family pictures that scowled at her from the wall, and informed Fairthorn that she had made great progress with her sketch of the old house as seen from the lake, and was in doubt whether she should introduce in the foreground some figures of the olden time, as in Nash's Views of Baronial Mansions. But not a word could she coax out of Fairthorn; and when she turned to appeal to Darrell, the host suddenly addressed to George a question as to the text and authorities by which the Papal Church defends its doctrine of Purgatory. That entailed a long and, no doubt, erudite reply, which lasted not only through the rest of the dinner, but till Mrs. Motley, edified by the discourse, and delighted to notice the undeviating attention which Darrell paid to her distinguished spouse, took advantage of the first full stop, and retired. Fairthorn finished his bottle of port, and, far from convinced that there was no Purgatory, but inclined to advance the novel heresy that Purgatory sometimes commenced on this side the grave--slinked away, and was seen no more that night; neither was his flute heard.

Then Darrell rose and said: "I shall go up-stairs to our sick friend for a few minutes; may I find you here when I come back? Your visit to him can follow mine."

On entering Waife's room, Darrell went straight forward towards Sophy, and cut off her retreat.