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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/7665.txt b/7665.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ec94c39 --- /dev/null +++ b/7665.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5588 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook What Will He Do With It, by Lytton, V7 +#93 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers***** + + +Title: What Will He Do With It, Book 7. + +Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton + +Release Date: March 2005 [EBook #7665] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on April 1, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + + + + + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT, V7 *** + + + +This eBook was produced by David Widger + + + + +BOOK VII. + + +CHAPTER I. + + VIGNETTES FOR THE NEXT BOOK OF BEAUTY. + +"I quite agree with you, Alban; Honoria Vipont is a very superior young +lady." + +"I knew you would think so!" cried the Colonel, with more warmth than +usual to him. + +"Many years since," resumed Darrell, with reflective air, "I read Miss +Edgeworth's novels; and in conversing with Miss Honoria Vipont, methinks +I confer with one of Miss Edgeworth's heroines--so rational, so prudent, +so well-behaved--so free from silly romantic notions--so replete with +solid information, moral philosophy and natural history--so sure to +regulate her watch and her heart to the precise moment, for the one to +strike, and the other to throb--and to marry at last a respectable steady +husband, whom she will win with dignity, and would lose with decorum! A +very superior girl indeed." + + ["Darrell speaks--not the author. Darrell is unjust to the more + exquisite female characters of a Novelist, admirable for strength of + sense, correctness of delineation, terseness of narrative, and + lucidity of style-nor less admirable for the unexaggerated nobleness + of sentiment by which some of her heroines are notably + distinguished.] + +"Though your description of Miss Vipont is satirical," said Alban Morley, +smiling, in spite of some irritation, "yet I will accept it as panegyric; +for it conveys, unintentionally, a just idea of the qualities that make +an intelligent coinpanion and a safe wife. And those are the qualities +we must look to, if we marry at our age. We are no longer boys," added +the Colonel sententiously. + +DARRELL.--"Alas, no! I wish we were. But the truth of your remark is +indisputable. Ah, look! Is not that a face which might make an +octogenarian forget that he is not a boy?--what regular features! +--and what a blush!" + +The friends were riding in the park; and as Darrell spoke, he bowed to a +young lady, who, with one or two others, passed rapidly by in a barouche. +It was that very handsome young lady to whom Lionel had seen him +listening so attentively in the great crowd, for which Carr Vipont's +family party had been deserted. + +Yes; Lady Adela is one of the loveliest girls in Loudon," said the +Colonel, who had also lifted his hat as the barouche whirled by--"and +amiable too: I have known her ever since she was born. Her father and I +are great friends--an excellent man but stingy. I had much difficulty in +arranging the eldest girl's marriage with Lord Bolton, and am a trustee +in the settlement. If you feel a preference for Lady Adela, though I +don't think she would suit you so well as Miss Vipont, I will answer for +her father's encouragement and her consent. 'Tis no drawback to you, +though it is to most of her admirers, when I add, 'There's nothing with +her!'" + +"And nothing in her! which is worse," said Darrell. + +"Still, it is pleasant to gaze on a beautiful landscape, even though the +soil be barren." + +COLONEL MORLEY.--"That depends upon whether you are merely the artistic +spectator of the landscape, or the disappointed proprietor of the soil." + +"Admirable!" said Darrell; "you have disposed of Lady Adela. So ho! so +ho!" Darrell's horse (his old high-nettled horse, freshly sent to him +from Fawley, and in spite of the five years that had added to its age, of +spirit made friskier by long repose) here put down its ears lashed out-- +and indulged in a bound which would have unseated many a London rider. +A young Amazon, followed hard by some two or three young gentlemen and +their grooms, shot by, swift and reckless as a hero at Balaclava. But +With equal suddenness, as she caught sight of Darrell--whose hand and +voice had already soothed the excited nerves of his steed--the Amazon +wheeled round and gained his side. Throwing up her veil, she revealed a +face so prettily arch, so perversely gay--with eye of radiant hazel, and +fair locks half loosened from their formal braid--that it would have +beguiled resentment from the most insensible--reconciled to danger the +most timid. And yet there was really a grace of humility in the +apologies she tendered for her discourtesy and thoughtlessness. As the +girl reined her light palfrey by Darrell's side-turning from the young +companions who had now joined her, their hackneys in a foam-and devoting +to his ear all her lively overflow of happy spirits, not untempered by a +certain deference, but still apparently free from dissimulation-- +Daxrell's grand face lighted up--his mellow laugh, unrestrained, though +low, echoed her sportive tones; her youth, her joyousness were +irresistibly contagious. Alban Morley watched observant, while +interchanging talk with her attendant comrades, young men of high ton, +but who belonged to that /jeunesse doree/ with which the surface of life +patrician is fretted over--young men with few ideas, fewer duties--but +with plenty of leisure--plenty of health--plenty of money in their +pockets--plenty of debts to their tradesmen--daring at Melton--scheming +at T'attersall's--pride to maiden aunts--plague to thrifty fathers-- +fickle lovers, but solid matches--in brief, fast livers, who get through +their youth betimes, and who, for the most part, are middle-aged before +they are thirty--tamed by wedlock--sobered by the responsibilities that +come with the cares of property and the dignities of rank--undergo abrupt +metamorphosis into chairmen of quarter sessions, county members, or +decorous peers;--their ideas enriched as their duties grow--their +opinions, once loose as willows to the wind, stiffening into the +palisades of fenced propriety--valuable, busy men, changed as Henry V., +when coming into the cares of state, he said to the Chief Justice, "There +is my hand;" and to Sir John Falstaff, + + "I know thee not, old roan; + Fall to thy prayers!" + +But meanwhile the elite of this /jeunesse doree/ glittered round Flora +Vyvyan: not a regular beauty like Lady Adela--not a fine girl like Miss +Vipont, but such a light, faultless figure--such a pretty radiant face-- +more womanly for affection to be manlike--Hebe aping Thalestris. Flora, +too, was an heiress--an only child--spoilt, wilful--not at all +accomplished--(my belief is that accomplishments are thought great bores +by the jeunesse doree)--no accomplishment except horsemanship, with a +slight knack at billiards, and the capacity to take three whiffs from a +Spanish cigarette. That last was adorable--four offers had been advanced +to her hand on that merit alone.--(N.B. Young ladies do themselves no +good with the jeunesse doree, which, in our time, is a lover that rather +smokes than "sighs, like furnace," by advertising their horror of +cigars.) You would suppose that Flora Vyvyan must be coarse-vulgar +perhaps; not at all; she was pignaute--original; and did the oddest +things with the air and look of the highest breeding. Fairies cannot be +vulgar, no matter what they do; they may take the strangest liberties-- +pinch the maids--turn the house topsy-turvy; but they are ever the +darlings of grace and poetry. Flora Vyvyan was a fairy. Not peculiarly +intellectual herself, she had a veneration for intellect; those fast +young men were the last persons likely to fascinate that fast young lady. +Women are so perverse; they always prefer the very people you would least +suspect--the antithesis to themselves. Yet is it possible that Flora +Vyvyan can have carried her crotchets to so extravagant a degree as to +have designed the conquest of Guy Darrell--ten years older than her own +father? She, too, an heiress--certainly not mercenary; she who had +already refused better worldly matches than Darrell himself was--young +men, handsome men, with coronets on the margin of their note-paper and +the panels of their broughams! The idea seemed preposterous; +nevertheless, Alban Morley, a shrewd observer, conceived that idea, and +trembled for his friend. + +At last the young lady and her satellites shot off, and the Colonel said +cautiously, "Miss Vyvyan is--alarming." + +DARRELL.--"Alarming! the epithet requires construing." + +COLONEL MORLEY.--"The sort of girl who might make a man of our years +really and literally an old fool!" + +DARRELL.--"Old fool such a man must be if girls of any sort are permitted +to make him a greater fool than he was before. But I think that, with +those pretty hands resting on one's arm-chair, or that sunny face shining +into one's study windows, one might be a very happy old fool--and that is +the most one can expect!" + +COLONEL MORLEY (checking an anxious groan).--"I am afraid, my poor +friend, you are far gone already. No wonder Honoria Vipont fails to be +appreciated. But Lady Selina has a maxim--the truth of which my +experience attests--'the moment it comes to woman, the most sensible men +are the'--" + +"Oldest fools!" put in Darrell. "If Mark Antony made such a goose of +himself for that painted harridan Cleopatra, what would he have done for +a blooming Juliet! Youth and high spirit! Alas! why are these to be +unsuitable companions for us, as we reach that climax in time and sorrow +--when to the one we are grown the most indulgent, and of the other have +the most need? Alban, that girl, if her heart were really won--her wild +nature wisely mastered, gently guided--would make a true, prudent, +loving, admirable wife--" + +"Heavens!" cried Alban Morley. + +"To such a husband," pursued Darrell, unheeding the ejaculation, "as-- +Lionel Haughton. What say you?" "Lionel--oh, I have no objection at all +to that; but he's too young yet to think of marriage--a mere boy. +Besides, if you yourself marry, Lionel could scarcely aspire to a girl of +Miss Vyvyan's birth and fortune." + +"Ho, not aspire! That boy at least shall not have to woo in vain from +the want of fortune. The day I marry--if ever that day come--I settle on +Lionel Haughton and his heirs five thousand a-year; and if, with gentle +blood, youth, good looks, and a heart of gold, that fortune does not +allow him to aspire to any girl whose hand he covets, I can double it, +and still be rich enough to buy a superior companion in Honoria Vipont--" + +MORLEY.--"Don't say buy--" + +DARRELL.--" Ay, and still be young enough to catch a butterfly in Lady +Adela--still be bold enough to chain a panther in Flora Vyvyan. Let the +world know--your world in each nook of its gaudy auction-mart--that +Lione: Haughton is no pauper cousin--no penniless fortune-hunter. I wish +that world to be kind to him while he is yet young, and can enjoy it. +Ah, Morley, Pleasure, like Punishment, hobbles after us, /pede claudo/. +What would have delighted us yesterday does not catch us up till +to-morrow, and yesterday's pleasure is not the morrow's. A pennyworth of +sugar-plums would have made our eyes sparkle when we were scrawling pot- +hooks at a preparatory school, but no one gave us sugar-plums then. Now +every day at dessert France heaps before us her daintiest sugar-plums in +gilt /bonbonnieres/. Do you ever covet them? I never do. Let Lionel +have his sugar-plums in time. And as we talk, there he comes. Lionel, +how are you?" + +"I resign you to Lionel's charge now," said the Colonel, glancing at his +watch. "I have an engagement--trouble some. Two silly friends of mine +have been quarrelling--high words--in an age when duels are out of the +question. I have promised to meet another man, and draw up the form for +a mutual apology. High words are so stupid nowadays. No option but to +swallow them up again if they were as high as steeples. Adieu for the +present. We meet to-night at Lady Dulcett's concert?" + +"Yes," said Darrell. "I promised Miss Vyvyan to be there, and keep her +from disturbing the congregation. You Lionel, will come with me." + +LIONELL (embarrassed).--"No; you must excuse me. I have long been +engaged elsewhere." + +"That's a pity," said the Colonel, gravely. "Lady Dulcett's conceit is +just one of the places where a young man should be seen." Colonel Morley +waved his hand with his usual languid elegance, and his hack cantered off +with him, stately as a charger, easy as a rocking-horse. + +"Unalterable man," said Darrell, as his eye followed the horseman's +receding figure. "'Through all the mutations on Time's dusty high-road- +stable as a milestone. Just what Alban Morley was as a school-boy he is +now; and if mortal span were extended to the age of the patriarchs, just +what Alban Morley is now, Alban Morley would be a thousand years hence. +I don't mean externally, of course; wrinkles will come--cheeks will fade. +But these are trifles: man's body is a garment, as Socrates said before +me, and every seven years, according to the physiologists, man has a new +suit, fibre and cuticle, from top to toe. The interior being that wears +the clothes is the same in Alban Morley. Has he loved, hated, rejoiced, +suffered? Where is the sign? Not one. At school, as in life, doing +nothing, but decidedly somebody--respected by small boys, petted by big +boys--an authority with all. Never getting honours--arm and arm with +those who did; never in scrapes--advising those who were; imperturbable, +immovable, calm above mortal cares as an Epicurean deity. What can +wealth give that he has not got? In the houses of the richest he chooses +his room. Talk of ambition, talk of power--he has their rewards without +an effort. True prime minister of all the realm he cares for; good +society has not a vote against him--he transacts its affairs, he knows +its secrets--he yields its patronage. Ever requested to do a favour--no +loan great enough to do him one. Incorruptible, yet versed to a fraction +in each man's price; impeccable, yet confidant in each man's foibles; +smooth as silk, hard as adamant; impossible to wound, vex, annoy him--but +not insensible; thoroughly kind. Dear, dear Alban! nature never polished +a finer gentleman out of a solider block of man!" Darrell's voice +quivered a little as he completed in earnest affection the sketch begun +in playful irony, and then with a sudden change of thought, he resumed +lightly: + +"But I wish you to do me a favour, Lionel. Aid me to repair a fault in +good breeding, of which Alban Morley would never have been guilty. I +have been several days in London, and not yet called on your mother. +Will you accompany me now to her house and present me?" + +"Thank you, thank you; you will make her so proud and happy; but may I +ride on and prepare her for your visit?" + +"Certainly; her address is--" + +"Gloucester Place, No.--." + +"I will meet you there in half an hour." + + + + +CHAPTER II. + + "Let observation, with expansive view, + Survey mankind from China to Peru," + +--AND OBSERVATION WILL EVERYWHERE FIND, INDISPENSABLE TO THE HAPPINESS OF +WOMAN, A VISITING ACQUAINTANCE. + +Lionel knew that Mrs. Haughton would that day need more than usual +forewarning of a visit from Mr. Darrell. For the evening of that day +Mrs. Haughton proposed "to give a party." When Mrs. Haughton gave a +party, it was a serious affair. A notable and bustling housewife, she +attended herself to each preparatory detail. It was to assist at this +party that Lionel had resigned Lady Dulcett's concert. The young man, +reluctantly acquiescing in the arrangements by which Alban Morley had +engaged him a lodging of his own, seldom or never let a day pass without +gratifying his mother's proud heart by an hour or two spent in Gloucester +Place, often to the forfeiture of a pleasant ride, or other tempting +excursion, with gay comrades. Difficult in London life, and at the full +of its season, to devote an hour or two to visits, apart from the track +chalked out by one's very mode of existence--difficult to cut off an hour +so as not to cut up a day. And Mrs. Haughton was exacting-nice in her +choice as to the exact slice in the day. She took the prime of the +joint. She liked her neighbours to see the handsome, elegant young man +dismount from his charger or descend from his cabriolet, just at the +witching hour when Gloucester Place was fullest. Did he go to a levee, +he must be sure to come to her before he changed his dress, that she and +Gloucester Place might admire him in uniform. Was he going to dine at +some very great house, he must take her in his way (though no street +could be more out of his way), that she might be enabled to say in the +parties to which she herself repaired "There is a great dinner at Lord +So-and-so's to-day; my son called on me before he went there. If he had +been disengaged, I should have asked permission to bring him here." + +Not that Mrs. Haughton honestly designed, nor even wished to draw the +young man from the dazzling vortex of high life into her own little +currents of dissipation. She was much too proud of Lionel to think that +her friends were grand enough for him to honour their houses by his +presence. She had in this, too, a lively recollection of her lost +Captain's doctrinal views of the great world's creed. The Captain had +flourished in the time when Impertinence, installed by Brummell, though +her influence was waning, still schooled her oligarchs, and maintained +the etiquette of her court; and even when his /misalliance/ and his debts +had cast him out of his native sphere, he lost not all the original +brightness of an exclusive. In moments of connubial confidence, when +owning his past errors, and tracing to his sympathising Jessie the causes +of his decline, he would say: "'Tis not a man's birth, nor his fortune, +that gives him his place in society--it depends on his conduct, Jessie. +He must not be seen bowing to snobs, nor should his enemies track him to +the haunts of vulgarians. I date my fall in life to dining with a horrid +man who lent me L100, and lived in Upper Baker Street. His wife took my +arm from a place they called a drawing-room (the Captain as he spoke was +on a fourth floor), to share some unknown food which they called a dinner +(the Captain at that moment would have welcomed a rasher). The woman +went about blabbing--the thing got wind--for the first time my character +received a soil. What is a man without character! and character once +sullied, Jessie, man becomes reckless. Teach my boy to beware of the +first false step--no association with parvenus. Don't cry, Jessie-- +I don't mean that he is to cut your--relations are quite different from +other people--nothing so low as cutting relations. I continued, for +instance, to visit Guy Darrell, though he lived at the back of Holborn, +and I actually saw him once in brown beaver gloves. But he was a +relation. I have even dined at his house, and met odd people there-- +people who lived also at the back of Holborn. But he did not ask me +to go to their houses, and if he had, I must have cut him." By +reminiscences of this kind of talk, Lionel was saved from any design of +Mrs. Haughton's to attract his orbit into the circle within which she +herself moved. He must come to the parties she gave--illumine or awe odd +people there. That was a proper tribute to maternal pride. But had they +asked him to their parties, she would have been the first to resent such +a liberty. + +Lionel found Mrs. Haughton in great bustle. A gardener's cart was before +the street door. Men were bringing in a grove of evergreens, intended to +border the staircase, and make its exiguous ascent still more difficult. +The refreshments were already laid out in the dining-room. Mrs. +Haughton, with scissors in hand, was cutting flowers to fill the eperyne, +but darting to and fro, like a dragonfly, from the dining-room to the +hall, from the flowers to the evergreens. + +"Dear me, Lionel, is that you? Just tell me, you who go to all those +grandees, whether the ratafia-cakes should be opposite to the spauge- +cakes, or whether they would not go better--thus--at cross-corners?" + +"My dear mother, I never observed--I don't know. But make haste-take off +that apron-have those doors shut come upstairs. Mr. Darrell will be here +very shortly. I have ridden on to prepare you." + +"Mr. Darrell--TO-DAY--HOW could you let him come? Oh, Lionel, how +thoughtless you are! You should have some respect for your mother--I am +your mother, sir." + +"Yes, my own dear mother--don't scold--I could not help it. He is so +engaged, so sought after; if I had put him off to-day, he might never +have come, and--" + +"Never have come! Who is Mr. Darrell, to give himself such airs?--Only a +lawyer after all," said Mrs. Haughton, with majesty. + +"Oh, mother, that speech is not like you. He is our benefactor--our--" + +"Don't, don't say very more--I was very wrong--quite wicked--only my +temper, Lionel dear. Good Mr. Darrell! I shall be so happy to see him-- +see him, too, in this house that I owe to him--see him by your side! I +think I shall fall down on my knees to him." + +And her eyes began to stream. + +Lionel kissed the tears away fondly. "That's my own mother now indeed-- +now I am proud of you, mother; and how well you look! I am proud of that +too." + +"Look well--I am not fit to be seen, this figure--though perhaps an +elderly quiet gentleman like good Mr. Darrell does not notice ladies +much. John, John, makes haste with those plants. Gracious me! you've +got your coat off!--put it on--I expect a gentleman--I'm at home, in the +front drawing-room--no--that's all set out--the back drawing-room, John. +Send Susan to me. Lionel, do just look at the supper-table; and what is +to be done with the flowers, and--" + +The rest of Mrs. Haughton's voice, owing to the rapidity of her ascent, +which affected the distinctness of her utterance, was lost in air. She +vanished at culminating point--within her chamber. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + MRS. HAUGHTON AT HOME TO GUY DARRELL. + +Thanks to Lionel's activity, the hall was disencumbered--the plants +hastily stowed away-the parlour closed on the festive preparations--and +the footman in his livery waiting at the door--when Mr. Darrell arrived. +Lionel himself came out and welcomed his benefactor's footstep across the +threshold of the home which the generous man had provided for the widow. + +If Lionel had some secret misgivings as to the result of this interview, +they were soon and most happily dispelled. For, at the sight of Guy +Darrell leaning so affectionately on her son's arm, Mrs. Haughton +mechanically gave herself up to the impulse of her own warm, grateful, +true woman's heart. And her bound forward, her seizure of Darrell's +hand--her first fervent blessing--her after words, simple but eloquent +with feeling--made that heart so transparent, that Darrell looked it +through with respectful eyes. + +Mrs. Haughton was still a pretty woman, and with much of that delicacy of +form and outline which constitutes the gentility of person. She had a +sweet voice too, except when angry. Her defects of education, of temper, +or of conventional polish, were not discernible in the overflow of +natural emotion. Darrell had come resolved to be released if possible. +Pleased he was, much more than he had expected. He even inly accepted +for the deceased Captain excuses which he had never before admitted to +himself. The linen-draper's daughter was no coarse presuming dowdy, and +in her candid rush of gratitude there was not that underbred servility +which Darrell had thought perceptible in her epistolary compositions. +There was elegance too, void both of gaudy ostentation and penurious +thrift, in the furniture and arrangements of the room. The income he +gave to her was not spent with slatternly waste or on tawdry gewgaws. To +ladies in general, Darrell's manner was extremely attractive--not the +less winning because of a certain shyness which, implying respect for +those he addressed, and a modest undervaluing of his own merit, conveyed +compliment and soothed self-love. And to that lady in especial such +gentle shyness was the happiest good-breeding. + +In short, all went off without a hitch, till, as Darrell was taking +leave, Mrs. Haughton was reminded by some evil genius of her evening +party, and her very gratitude, longing for some opportunity to requite +obligation, prompted her to invite the kind man to whom the facility of +giving parties was justly due. She had never realised to herself, +despite all that Lionel could say, the idea of Darrell's station in the +world--a lawyer who had spent his youth at the back of Holborn, whom the +stylish Captain had deemed it a condescension not to cut, might indeed +become very rich; but he could never be the fashion. "Poor man," she +thought, "he must be very lonely. He is not, like Lionel, a young +dancing man. A quiet little party, with people of his own early rank and +habits, would be more in his way than those grand places to which Lionel +goes. I can but ask him--I ought to ask him. What would he say if I did +not ask him? Black ingratitude indeed, if he were not asked!" All these +ideas rushed through her mind in a breath, and as she clasped Darrell's +extended hand in both her own, she said: "I have a little party to- +night!"--and paused. Darrell remaining mute, and Lionel not suspecting +what was to ensue, she continued: "There may be some good music--young +friends of mine--sing charmingly--Italians!" + +Darrell bowed. Lionel began to shudder. + +"And if I might presume to think it would amuse you, Mr. Darrell, oh, I +should be so happy to see you!--so happy!" + +"Would you?" said Darrell, briefly. "Then I should be a churl if I did +not come. Lionel will escort me. Of course you expect him too?" + +"Yes, indeed. Though he has so many fine places to go to-and it can't be +exactly what he is used to-yet he is such a dear good boy that he gives +up all to gratify his mother." + +Lionel, in agonies, turned an unfilial back, and looked steadily out of +the window; but Darrell, far too august to take offence where none was +meant, only smiled at the implied reference to Lionel's superior demand +in the fashionable world, and replied, without even a touch of his +accustomed irony: "And to gratify his mother is a pleasure I thank you +for inviting me to share with him." + +More and more at her ease, and charmed with having obeyed her hospitable +impulse, Mrs. Haughton, following Darrell to the landing-place, added: + +"And if you like to play a quiet rubber--" + +"I never touch cards--I abhor the very name of them, ma'am," interrupted +Darrell, somewhat less gracious in his tones. + +He mounted his horse; and Lionel, breaking from Mrs. Haughton, who was +assuring him that Mr. Darrell was not at all what she expected, but +really quite the gentleman--nay, a much grander gentleman than even +Colonel Morley--regained his kinsman's side, looking abashed and +discomfited. Darrell, with the kindness which his fine quick intellect +enabled him so felicitously to apply, hastened to relieve the young +guardsman's mind. + +"I like your mother much--very much," said he, in his most melodious +accents. "Good boy! I see now why you gave up Lady Dulcett. Go and +take a canter by yourself, or with younger friends, and be sure you call +on me so that we may be both at Mrs. Haughton's by ten o'clock. I can go +later to the concert if I feel inclined." + +He waved his hand, wheeled his horse, and trotted off towards the fair +suburban lanes that still proffer to the denizens of London glimpses of +rural fields, and shadows from quiet hedgerows. He wished to be alone; +the sight of Mrs. Haughton had revived recollections of bygone days-- +memory linking memory in painful chain-gay talk with his younger +schoolfellow--that wild Charlie, now in his grave--his own laborious +youth, resolute aspirings, secret sorrows--and the strong man felt the +want of the solitary self-commune, without which self-conquest is +unattainable. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + MRS. HAUGHTON AT HOME MISCELLANEOUSLY. LITTLE PARTIES ARE USEFUL IN + BRINGING PEOPLE TOGETHER. ONE NEVER KNOWS WHOM ONE MAY MEET. + +Great kingdoms grew out of small beginnings. Mrs. Haughton's social +circle was described from a humble centre. On coming into possession of +her easy income and her house in Gloucester Place, she was naturally +seized with the desire of an appropriate "visiting acquaintance." The +accomplishment of that desire had been deferred awhile by the excitement +of Lionel's departure for Paris, and the IMMENSE TEMPTATION to which the +attentions of the spurious Mr. Courtenay Smith had exposed her widowed +solitude: but no sooner had she recovered from the shame and anger with +which she had discarded that showy impostor, happily in time, than the +desire became the more keen; because the good lady felt that with a mind +so active and restless as hers, a visiting acquaintance might be her best +preservative from that sense of loneliness which disposes widows to lend +the incautious ear to adventurous wooers. After her experience of her +own weakness in listening to a sharper, and with a shudder at her escape, +Mrs. Haughton made a firm resolve never to give her beloved son a father- +in-law. No, she would distract her thoughts--she would have a VISITING +ACQUAINTANCE. She commenced by singling out such families as at various +times had been her genteelest lodgers--now lodging elsewhere. She +informed them by polite notes of her accession of consequence and +fortune, which she was sure they would be happy to hear; and these notes, +left with the card of "Mrs. Haughton, Gloucester Place," necessarily +produced respondent notes and correspondent cards. Gloucester Place then +prepared itself for a party. The ci-devant lodgers urbanely attended the +summons. In their turn they gave parties. Mrs. Haughton was invited. +From each such party she bore back a new draught into her "social +circle." Thus, long before the end of five years, Mrs. Haughton had +attained her object. She had a "VISITING ACQUAINTANCE!" It is true that +she was not particular; so that there was a new somebody at whose house a +card could be left, or a morning call achieved--who could help to fill +her rooms, or whose rooms she could contribute to fill in turn. She was +contented. She was no tuft-hunter. She did not care for titles. She +had no visions of a column in the Morning Post. She wanted, kind lady, +only a vent for the exuberance of her social instincts; and being proud, +she rather liked acquaintances who looked up to, instead of looking down +on her. Thus Gloucester Place was invaded by tribes not congenial to its +natural civilised atmosphere. Hengists and Horsas, from remote Anglo- +Saxon districts, crossed the intervening channel, and insulted the +British nationality of that salubrious district. To most of such +immigrators, Mrs. Haughton, of Gloucester Place, was a personage of the +highest distinction. A few others of prouder status in the world, though +they owned to themselves that there was a sad mixture at Mrs. Haughton's +house, still, once seduced there, came again--being persons who, however +independent in fortune or gentle by blood, had but a small "visiting +acquaintance" in town; fresh from economical colonisation on the +Continent or from distant provinces in these three kingdoms. Mrs. +Haughton's rooms were well lighted. There was music for some, whist for +others; tea, ices, cakes, and a crowd for all. + +At ten o'clock-the rooms already nearly filled, and Mrs. Haughton, as she +stood at the door, anticipating with joy that happy hour when the +staircase would become inaccessible--the head attendant, sent with the +ices from the neighbouring confectioner, announced in a loud voice: "Mr. +Haughton--Mr. Darrell." + +At that latter name a sensation thrilled the assembly--the name so much +in every one's mouth at that period, nor least in the mouths of the great +middle class, on whom--though the polite may call them "a sad mixture," +cabinets depend--could not fail to be familiar to the ears of Mrs. +Haughton's "visiting acquaintance." The interval between his +announcement and his ascent from the hall to the drawing-room was busily +filled up by murmured questions to the smiling hostess: "Darrell! what! +the Darrell! Guy Darrell! greatest man of the day! A connection of +yours? Bless me, you don't say so?" Mrs. Haughton began to feel +nervous. Was Lionel right? Could the man who had only been a lawyer at +the back of Holborn really be, now, such a very, very great man--greatest +man of the day? Nonsense! + +"Ma'am," said one pale, puff-cheeked, flat-nosed gentleman, in a very +large white waistcoat, who was waiting by her side till a vacancy in one +of the two whist-tables should occur. "Ma'am, I'm an enthusiastic +admirer of Mr. Darrell. You say he is a connection of yours? Present me +to him." + +Mrs. Haughton nodded flutteringly, for, as the gentleman closed his +request, and tapped a large gold snuff-box, Darrell stood before her-- +Lionel close at his side, looking positively sheepish. The great man +said a few civil words, and was gliding into the room to make way for the +press behind him, when he of the white waistcoat, touching Mrs. +Haughton's arm, and staring Darrell full in the face, said, very loud: +"In these anxious times, public men dispense with ceremony. I crave an +introduction to Mr. Darrell." Thus pressed, poor Mrs. Haughton, without +looking up, muttered out: "Mr. Adolphus Poole--Mr. Darrell," and turned +to welcome fresh comers. + +"Mr. Darrell," said Mr. Poole, bowing to the ground, "this is an honour." + +Darrell gave the speaker one glance of his keen eye, and thought to +himself: "If I were still at the bar I should be sorry to hold a brief +for that fellow." However, he returned the bow formally, and, bowing +again at the close of a highly complimentary address with which Mr. Poole +followed up his opening sentence, expressed himself "much flattered," and +thought he had escaped; but wherever he went through the crowd, Mr. Poole +contrived to follow him, and claim his notice by remarks on the affairs +of the day--the weather--the funds--the crops. At length Darrell +perceived, sitting aloof in a corner, an excellent man whom indeed it +surprised him to see in a London drawing-room, but who, many years ago, +when Darrell was canvassing the enlightened constituency of Ouzelford, +had been on a visit to the chairman of his committee--an influential +trader--and having connections in the town--and, being a very high +character, had done him good service in the canvass. Darrell rarely +forgot a face, and never a service. At any time he would have been glad +to see the worthy man once more, but at that time he was grateful indeed. + +"Excuse me," he said bluntly to Mr. Poole, "but I see an old friend." He +moved on, and thick as the crowd had become, it made way, with respect as +to royalty for the distinguished orator. The buzz of admiration as he +passed--louder than in drawing-rooms more refined--would have had +sweeter music than Grisi's most artful quaver to a vainer man--nay, once +on a time to him. But--sugar plums come too late! He gained the corner, +and roused the solitary sitter. + +"My dear Mr. Hartopp, do you not remember me--Guy Darrell?" + +"Mr. Darrell!" cried the ex-mayor of Gatesboro', rising, "who could +think that you would remember me?" + +"What! not remember those ten stubborn voters, on whom, all and singly, +I had lavished my powers of argu ment in vain? You came, and with the +brief words, 'John--Ned--Dick--oblige me-vote for Darrell!' the men were +convinced--the votes won. That's what I call eloquence"--(sotto voce- +"Confound that fellow! still after me! "Aside to Hartopp)--"Oh! may I ask +who is that Mr. What's-his-name--there--in the white waistcoat?" + +"Poole," answered Hartopp. "Who is he, sir? A speculative man. He is +connected with a new Company--I am told it answers. Williams (that's my +foreman--a very long head he has too) has taken shares in the Company, +and wanted me to do the same, but 'tis not in my way. And Mr. Poole may +be a very honest man, but he does not impress me with that idea. I have +grown careless; I know I am liable to be taken in--I was so once--and +therefore I avoid 'Companies' upon principle--especially when they +promise thirty per cent., and work copper mines--Mr. Poole has a copper +mine." + +"And deals in brass--you may see it in his face! But you are not in town +for good, Mr. Hartopp? If I remember right, you were settled at +Gatesboro' when we last met." + +"And so I am still--or rather in the neighbourhood. I am gradually +retiring from business, and grown more and more fond of farming. But I +have a family, and we live in enlightened times, when children require a +finer education than their parents had. Mrs. Hartopp thought my daughter +Anna Maria was in need of some 'finishing lessons'--very fond of the harp +is Anna Maria--and so we have taken a house in London for six weeks. +That's Mrs. Hartopp yonder, with the bird on her head--bird of paradise, +I believe; Williams says birds of that kind never rest. That bird is an +exception--it has rested on Mrs. Hartopp's head for hours together, every +evening since we have been in town." + +"Significant of your connubial felicity, Mr. Hartopp." + +"May it be so of Anna Maria' s. She is to be married when her education +is finished--married, by the by, to a son of your old friend Jessop, of +Ouzelford; and between you and me, Mr. Darrell, that is the reason why I +consented to come to town. Do not suppose that I would have a daughter +finished unless there was a husband at hand who undertook to be +responsible for the results." + +"You retain your wisdom, Mr. Hartopp; and I feel sure that not even your +fair partner could have brought you up to London unless you had decided +on the expediency of coming. Do you remember that I told you the day you +so admirably settled a dispute in our committee-room, 'it was well you +were not born a king, for you would have been an irresistible tyrant'?" + +"Hush! hush!" whispered Hartopp, in great alarm, "if Mrs. H. should hear +you! What an observer you are, sir. I thought I was a judge of +character--but I was once deceived. I dare say you never were." + +"You mistake," answered Darrell, wincing, "you deceived! How?" + +"Oh, a long story, sir. It was an elderly man--the most agreeable, +interesting companion--a vagabond nevertheless--and such a pretty +bewitching little girl with him, his grandchild. I thought he might have +been a wild harumscarum chap in his day, but that he had a true sense of +honour"--(Darrell, wholly uninterested in this narrative, suppressed a +yawn, and wondered when it would end). + +"Only think, sir, just as I was saying to myself, 'I know character--I +never was taken in,' down comes a smart fellow--the man's own son--and +tells me--or rather he suffers a lady who comes with him to tell me--that +this charming old gentleman of high sense of honour was a returned +convict--been transported for robbing his employer." + +Pale, breathless, Darrell listened, not unheeding now. "What was the +name of--of--" + +"The convict? He called himself Chapman, but the son's name was Losely-- +Jasper." + +"Ah!" faltered Darrell, recoiling. "And you spoke of a little girl?" + +"Jasper Losely's daughter; he came after her with a magistrate's warrant. +The old miscreant had carried her off,--to teach her his own swindling +ways, I suppose." + +"Luckily she was then in my charge. I gave her back to her father, and +the very respectable-looking lady he brought with him. Some relation, I +presume." + +"What was her name, do you remember?" + +"Crane." + +"Crane!--Crane!" muttered Darrell, as if trying in vain to tax his +memory with that name. "So he said the child was his daughter--are you +sure?" + +"Oh, of course he said so, and the lady too. But can you be acquainted +with their, sir?" + +"I?--no! Strangers to me, except by repute. Liars--infamous liars! But +have the accomplices quarrelled--I mean the son and father--that the +father should be exposed and denounced by the son?" + +"I conclude so. I never saw them again. But you believe the father +really was, then, a felon, a convict--no excuse for him--no extenuating +circumstances? There was something in that man, Mr. Darrell, that made +one love him--positively love him; and when I had to tell him that I had +given up the child he trusted to my charge, and saw his grief, I felt a +criminal myself." + +Darrell said nothing, but the character of his face was entirely altered +--stern, hard, relentless--the face of an inexorable judge. Hartopp, +lifting his eyes suddenly to that countenance, recoiled in awe. + +"You think I was a criminal!" he said, piteously. + +"I think we are both talking too much, Mr. Hartopp, of a gang of +miserable swindlers, and I advise you to dismiss the whole remembrance of +intercourse with any of them from your honest breast, and never to repeat +to other ears the tale you have poured into mine. Men of honour should +crush down the very thought that approaches them to knaves." + +Thus saying, Darrell moved off with abrupt rudeness, and passing quickly +back through the crowd, scarcely noticed Mrs. Haughton by a retreating +nod, nor heeded Lionel at all, but hurried down the stairs. He was +impatiently searching for his cloak in the back parlour, when a voice +behind said: "Let me assist you, sir--do:" and turning round with +petulant quickness, he beheld again Mr. Adolphus Poole. It requires an +habitual intercourse with equals to give perfect and invariable control +of temper to a man of irritable nerves and frank character; and though, +where Daxrell really liked, he had much sweet forbearance, and where he +was indifferent much stately courtesy, yet, when he was offended, he +could be extremely uncivil. "Sir," he cried almost stamping his foot, +"your importunities annoy me I request you to cease them." + +"Oh, I ask your pardon," said Mr. Poole, with an angry growl. "I have no +need to force myself on any man. But I beg you to believe that if I +presumed to seek your acquaintance, it was to do you a service sir--yes, +a private service, sir." He lowered his voice into a whisper, and laid +his finger on his nose: "There's one Jasper Losely, sir--eh? Oh, sir, +I'm no mischief-maker. I respect family secrets. Perhaps I might be of +use, perhaps not." + +"Certainly not to me, sir," said Darrell, flinging the cloak he had now +found across his shoulders, and striding from the house. When he entered +his carriage, the footman stood waiting for orders. Darrell was long in +giving them. "Anywhere for half an hour--to St. Paul's, then home." +But on returning from this objectless plunge into the City, Darrell +pulled the check-string: "To Belgrave Square--Lady Dulcett's." + +The concert was half over; but Flora Vyvyan had still guarded, as she had +promised, a seat beside herself for Darrell, by lending it for the +present to one of her obedient vassals. Her face brightened as she saw +Darrell enter and approach. The vassal surrendered the chair. Darrell +appeared to be in the highest spirits; and I firmly believe that he was +striving to the utmost in his power--what? to make himself agreeable to +Flora Vyvyan? No; to make Flora Vyvyan agreeable to himself. The man +did not presume that a fair young lady could be in love with him; perhaps +he believed that, at his years, to be impossible. But he asked what +seemed much easier, and was much harder--he asked to be himself in love. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + + IT IS ASSERTED BY THOSE LEARNED MEN WHO HAVE DEVOTED THEIR LIVES TO + THE STUDY OF THE MANNERS AND HABIT OF INSECT SOCIETY, THAT WHEN A + SPIDER HAS LOST ITS LAST WEB, HAVING EXHAUSTED ALL THE GLUTINOUS + MATTER WHEREWITH TO SPIN ANOTHER, IT STILL. PROTRACTS ITS INNOCENT + EXISTENCE, BY OBTRUDING ITS NIPPERS ON SOME LESS WARLIKE BUT MORE + RESPECTABLE SPIDER, POSSESSED OF A CONVENIENT HOME AND AN AIRY + LARDER. OBSERVANT MORALISTS HAVE NOTICED THE SAME PECULIARITY IN + THE MANEATER, OR POCKET-CANNIBAL. + +Eleven o'clock, A.M., Samuel Adolphus Poole, Esq., is in his parlour, +--the house one of those new dwellings which yearly spring up north of +the Regent's Park,--dwellings that, attesting the eccentricity of the +national character, task the fancy of the architect and the gravity of +the beholder--each tenement so tortured into contrast with the other, +that, on one little rood of ground, all ages seemed blended, and all +races encamped. No. 1 is an Egyptian tomb!--Pharaohs may repose there! +No. 2 is a Swiss chalet--William Tell may be shooting in its garden! Lo! +the severity of Doric columns--Sparta is before you! Behold that Gothic +porch--you are rapt to the Norman days! Ha! those Elizabethan mullions-- +Sidney and Raleigh, rise again! Ho! the trellises of China--come forth, +Confucius, and Commissioner Yeh! Passing a few paces, we are in the land +of the Zegri and Abencerrage: + + 'Land of the dark-eyed maid and dusky Moor.' + +Mr. Poole's house is called Alhambra Villa! Moorish verandahs--plate- +glass windows, with cusped heads and mahogany sashes--a garden behind, +a smaller one in front--stairs ascending to the doorway under a Saracenic +portico, between two pedestalled lions that resemble poodles--the whole +new and lustrous--in semblance stone, in substance stucco-cracks in the +stucco denoting "settlements." But the house being let for ninety-nine +years--relet again on a running lease of seven, fourteen, and twenty-one- +the builder is not answerable for duration, nor the original lessee for +repairs. Take it altogether, than Alhambra Villa masonry could devise no +better type of modern taste and metropolitan speculation. + +Mr. Poole, since we saw him between four and five years ago, has entered +the matrimonial state. He has married a lady of some money, and become a +reformed man. He has eschewed the turf, relinquished Belcher neckcloths +and Newmarket coats-dropped his old-bachelor acquaintances. When a man +marries and reforms, especially when marriage and reform are accompanied +with increased income, and settled respectably in Alhambra Villa-- +relations, before estranged, tender kindly overtures: the world, before +austere, becomes indulgent. It was so with Poole--no longer Dolly. +Grant that in earlier life he had fallen into bad ways, and, among +equivocal associates, had been led on by that taste for sporting which is +a manly though a perilous characteristic of the true-born Englishman; he +who loves horses is liable to come in contact with blacklegs; the racer +is a noble animal; but it is his misfortune that the better his breeding +the worse his company:--Grant that, in the stables, Adolphus Samuel Poole +had picked up some wild oats--he had sown them now. Bygones were +bygones. He had made a very prudent marriage. Mrs. Poole was a sensible +woman--had rendered him domestic, and would keep him straight! His uncle +Samuel, a most worthy man, had found him that sensible woman, and, having +found her, had paid his nephew's debts, and adding a round sum to the +lady's fortune, had seen that the whole was so tightly settled on wife +and children that Poole had the tender satisfaction of knowing that, +happen what might to himself, those dear ones were safe; nay, that if, in +the reverses of fortune, he should be compelled by persecuting creditors +to fly his native shores, law could not impair the competence it had +settled upon Mrs. Poole, nor destroy her blessed privilege to share that +competence with a beloved spouse. Insolvency itself, thus protected by a +marriage settlement, realises the sublime security of VIRTUE immortalised +by the Roman muse: + + --"Repulse nescia sordidae, + Intaminatis fulget honoribus; + Nec sumit ant ponit secures + Arbitrio popularis aurae." + +Mr. Poole was an active man in the parish vestry--he was a sound +politician--he subscribed to public charities--he attended public +dinners he had votes in half a dozen public institutions--he talked of +the public interests, and called himself a public man. He chose his +associates amongst gentlemen in business--speculative, it is true, but +steady. A joint-stock company was set up; he obtained an official +station at its board, coupled with a salary--not large, indeed, but still +a salary. + +"The money," said Adolphus Samuel Poole, "is not my object; but I like to +have something to do." I cannot say how he did something, but no doubt +somebody was done. + +Mr. Poole was in his parlour, reading letters and sorting papers, before +he departed to his office in the West End. Mrs. Poole entered, leading +an infant who had not yet learned to walk alone, and denoting, by an +interesting enlargement of shape, a kindly design to bless that infant, +at no distant period, with a brother or sister, as the case might be. + +"Come and kiss Pa, Johnny," said she to the infant. "Mrs. Poole, I am +busy," growled Pa. + +"Pa's busy--working hard for little Johnny. Johnny will be better for it +some day," said Mrs. Poole, tossing the infant half up to the ceiling, in +compensation for the loss of the paternal kiss. + +"Mrs. Poole, what do you want?" + +"May I hire Jones's brougham for two hours to-day, to pay visits? There +are a great many cards we ought to leave; is there any place where I +should leave a card for you, lovey--any person of consequence you were +introduced to at Mrs. Haughton's last night? That great man they were +all talking about, to whom you seemed to take such a fancy, Samuel, +duck--" + +"Do get out! that man insulted me, I tell you." + +"Insulted you! No; you never told me." + +"I did tell you last night coming home." + +"Dear me, I thought you meant that Mr. Hartopp." + +"Well, he almost insulted me, too. Mrs. Poole, you are stupid and +disagreeable. Is that all you have to say?" + +"Pa's cross, Johnny dear! poor Pa!--people have vexed Pa, Johnny-- +naughty people. We must go or we shall vex him too." + +Such heavenly sweetness on the part of a forbearing wife would have +softened Tamburlane. Poole's sullen brow relaxed. If women knew how to +treat men, not a husband, unhenpecked, would be found from Indos to the +Pole. + +And Poole, for all his surly demeanour, was as completely governed by +that angel as a bear by his keeper. + +"Well, Mrs. Poole, excuse me. I own I am out of sorts to-day--give me +little Johnny--there (kissing the infant; who in return makes a dig at +Pa's left eye, and begins to cry on finding that he has not succeeded in +digging it out)--take the brougham. Hush, Johnny--hush--and you may +leave a card for me at Mr. Peckham's, Harley Street. My eye smarts +horribly; that baby will gouge me one of these days." + +Mrs. Poole had succeeded in stilling the infant, and confessing that +Johnny's fingers are extremely strong for his age--but, adding that +babies will catch at whatever is very bright and beautiful, such as gold +and jewels and Mr. Poole's eyes, administers to the wounded orb so +soothing a lotion of pity and admiration that Poole growls out quite +mildly: "Nonsense, blarney--by the by, I did not say this morning that +you should not have the rosewood chiffoniere!" + +"No, you said you could not afford it, duck; and when Pa says he can't +afford it, Pa must be the judge--must not he, Johnny dear?" + +"But perhaps I can afford it. Yes, you may have it yes, I say, you shall +have it. Don't forget to leave that card on Peckham--he's a moneyed man. +There's a ring at the bell. Who is it? run and see." + +Mrs. Poole obeyed with great activity, considering her interesting +condition. She came back in half a minute. "Oh, my Adolphus--I oh, my +Samuel! it is that dreadful-looking man who was here the other evening-- +stayed with you so long. I don't like his looks at all. Pray don't be +at home." + +"I must," said Poole, turning a shade paler, if that were possible. +"Stop--don't let that girl go to the door; and you--leave me." He +snatched his hat and gloves, and putting aside the parlour-maid, who had +emerged from the shades below in order to answer the "ring," walked +hastily down the small garden. + +Jasper Losely was stationed at the little gate. Jasper was no longer in +rags, but he was coarsely clad--clad as if he had resigned all pretence +to please a lady's eye, or to impose upon a West-End tradesman--a check +shirt--a rough pea-jacket, his hands buried in its pockets. + +Poole started with well--simulated surprise. "What, you! I am just +going to my office--in a great hurry at present." + +"Hurry or not, I must and will speak to you," said Jasper, doggedly. + +"What now? then, step in;--only remember I can't give you snore than five +minutes." + +The rude visitor followed Poole into the back parlour, and closed the +door after him. + +Leaning his arm over a chair, his hat still on his head, Losely fixed his +fierce eyes on his old friend, and said in a low, set, deterinined voice: +"Now, mark me, Dolly Poole, if you think to shirk my business, or throw +me over, you'll find yourself in Queer Street. Have you called on Guy +Darrell, and put my case to him, or have you not?" + +"I met Mr. Darrell only last night, at a very genteel party." (Poole +deeined it prudent not to say by WHOM that genteel party was given, for +it will be remembered that Poole had been Jasper's confidant in that +adventurer's former designs upon Mrs. Haughton; and if Jasper knew that +Poole had made her acquaintance, might he not insist upon Poole's +reintroducing him as a visiting acquaintance?) "A very genteel party," +repeated Poole. "I made a point of being presented to Mr. Darrell, and +very polite he was at first." + +"Curse his politeness--get to the point." + +"I sounded my way very carefully, as you may suppose; and when I had got +him into friendly chat, you understand, I began; Ah! my poor Losely, +nothing to be done there--he flew off in a tangent--as much as desired me +to mind my own business, and hold my tongue; and upon my life, I don't +think there is a chance for you in that quarter." + +"Very well--we shall see. Next, have you taken any steps to find out the +girl, my daughter?" + +"I have, I assure you. But you give me so slight a clue. Are you quite +sure she is not in America after all?" + +"I have told you before that that story about America was all bosh! a +stratagem of the old gentleman's to deceive me. Poor old man," continued +Jasper, in a tone that positively betrayed feeling, "I don't wonder that +he dreads and flies me; yet I would not hurt him more than I have done, +even to be as well off as you are--blinking at me from your mahogany +perch like a pet owl with its crop full of mice. And if I would take the +girl from him, it is for her own good. For if Darrell could be got to +make a provision on her, and, through her, on myself, why, of course the +old man should share the benefit of it. And now that these infernal +pains often keep me awake half the night, I can't always shut out the +idea of that old man wandering about the world, and dying in a ditch. +And that runaway girl--to whom, I dare swear, he would give away his last +crumb of bread--ought to be an annuity to us both: Basta, basta! As to +the American story--I had a friend at Paris, who went to America on a +speculation; I asked him to inquire about this Willaim Waife and his +granddaughter Sophy, who were said to have sailed for New York nearly +five years ago, and he saw the very persons--settled in New York--no +longer under the name of Waife, but their true name of Simpson, and got +out from the man that they had been induced to take their passage from +England in the name of Waife, at the request of a person whom the mail +would not-give up, but to whom he said he was under obligations. Perhaps +the old gentleman had done the fellow a kind turn in early life. The +description of this /soi-disant/ Waife and his grandchild settles the +matter--wholly unlike those I seek; so that there is every reason to +suppose they must still be in England, and it is your business to find +them. Continue your search--quicken your wits--let me be better pleased +with your success when I call again this day week--and meanwhile four +pounds, if you please--as much more as you like." + +"Why, I gave you four pounds the other day, besides six pounds for +clothes; it can't be gone." + +"Every penny." + +"Dear, dear! can't you maintain yourself anyhow? Can't you get any one +to play at cards? Four pounds! Why, with your talent for whist, four +pounds are a capital!" + +"Whom can I play with! Whom can I herd with? Cracksmen and pickpockets. +Fit me out; ask me to your own house; invite your own friends; make up a +rubber, and you will then see what I can do with four pounds; and may go +shares if you like, as we used to do." + +"Don't talk so loud. Losely, you know very well that what you ask is +impossible. I've turned over a new leaf." + +"But I've still got your handwriting on the old leaf." + +"What's the good of these stupid threats? If you really wanted to do me +a mischief, where could you go to, and who'd believe you?" + +"I fancy your wife would. I'll try. Hillo--" + +"Stop--stop--stop. No row here, sir. No scandal. Hold your tongue, or +I'll send for the police." + +"Do! Nothing I should like better. I'm tired out. I want to tell my +own story at the Old Bailey, and have my revenge upon you, upon Darrell, +upon all. Send for the police." + +Losely threw himself at length on the sofa--(new morocco with spring +cushions)--and folded his arms. + +"You could only give me five minutes--they are gone, I fear. I am more +liberal. I give you your own time to consider. I don't care if I stay +to dine; I dare say Mrs. Poole will excuse my dress." + +"Losely, you are such a--fellow! If I do give you the four pounds you +ask, will you promise to shift for yourself somehow, and molest me no +more?" + +"Certainly not. I shall come once every week for the same sum. I can't +live upon less--until--" + +"Until what?" + +"Until either you get Mr. Darrell to settle on me a suitable provision; +or until you place me in possession of my daughter, and I can then be in +a better condition to treat with him myself; for if I would make a claim +on account of the girl, I must produce the girl, or he may say she is +dead. Besides, if she be as pretty as she was when a child, the very +sight of her might move him more than all my talk." + +"And if I succeed in doing anything with Mr. Darrell, or discovering your +daughter, you will give up all such letters and documents of mine as you +say you possess?" + +"'Say I possess!' I have shown them to you in this pocket-book, Dolly +Poole--your own proposition to rob old Latham's safe." + +Poole eyed the book, which the ruffian took out and tapped. Had the +ruffian been a slighter man, Poole would have been a braver one. As it +was--he eyed and groaned. "Turn against one's own crony! So unhandsome, +so unlike what I thought you were." + +"It is you who would turn against me. But stick to Darrell or find me my +daughter, and help her and me to get justice out of him; and you shall +not only have back these letters, but I'll pay you handsomely-- +handsomely, Dolly Poole. Zooks, sir--I am fallen, but I am always a +gentleman." + +Therewith Losely gave a vehement slap to his hat, which, crushed by the +stroke, improved his general appearance into an aspect so outrageously +raffish, that but for the expression of his countenance the contrast +between the boast and the man would have been ludicrous even to Mr. +Poole. The countenance was too dark to permit laughter. In the dress, +but the ruin of fortune--in the face, the ruin of man. Poole heaved a +deep sigh, and extended four sovereigns. + +Losely rose and took them carelessly. "This day week," he said--shook +himself--and went his way. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + FRESH TOUCHES TO THE THREE VIGNETTES FOR THE BOOK OF BEAUTY. + +Weeks passed--the London season was beginning--Darrell had decided +nothing--the prestige of his position was undiminished,--in politics, +perhaps higher. He had succeeded in reconciling some great men; he had +strengthened--it might be saved--a jarring cabinet. In all this he had +shown admirable knowledge of mankind, and proved that time and disuse had +not lessened his powers of perception. In his matrimonial designs, +Darrell seemed more bent than ever upon the hazard--irresolute as ever on +the choice of a partner. Still the choice appeared to be circumscribed +to the fair three who had been subjected to Colonel Morley's speculative +criticism--Lady Adela, Miss Vipont, Flora Vyvyan. Much pro and con might +be said in respect to each. Lady Adela was so handsome that it was a +pleasure to look at her; and that is much when one sees the handsome face +every day,--provided the pleasure does not wear off. She had the +reputation of a very good temper; and the expression of her countenance +confirmed it. There, panegyric stopped; but detraction did not commence. +What remained was inoffensive commonplace. She had no salient attribute, +and no ruling passion. Certainly she would never have wasted a thought +on Mr. Darrell, nor have discovered a single merit in him, if he had not +been quoted as a very rich man of high character in search of a wife, and +if her father had not said to her: "Adela, Mr. Darrell has been greatly +struck with your appearance--he told me so. He is not young, but he is +still a very fine looking man, and you are twenty-seven. 'Tis a greater +distinction to be noticed by a person of his years and position, than by +a pack of silly young fellows, who think more of their own pretty faces +than they would ever do of yours." + +"If you did not mind a little disparity of years, he would make you a +happy wife; and, in the course of nature, a widow, not too old to enjoy +liberty, and with a jointure that might entitle you to a still better +match." + +Darrell thus put into Lady Adela's head, he remained there, and became an +/idee fixe/. Viewed in the light of a probable husband, he was elevated +into an "interesting man." She would have received his addresses with +gentle complacency; and, being more the creature of habit than impulse, +would no doubt, in the intimacy of connubial life, have blest him, or any +other admiring husband, with a resaonable modicum of languid affection. +Nevertheless, Lady Adela was an unconscious impostor; for, owing to a +mild softness of eye and a susceptibility to blushes, a victim ensnared +by her beauty would be apt to give her credit for a nature far more +accessible to the romance of the tender passion than, happily perhaps for +her own peace of mind, she possessed; and might flatter himself that he +had produced a sensation which gave that softness to the eye and that +damask to the blush. + +Honoria Vipont would have been a choice far more creditable to the good +sense of so mature a wooer. Few better specimens of a young lady brought +up to become an accomplished woman of the world. She had sufficient +instruction to be the companion of an ambitious man-solid judgment to fit +her for his occasional adviser. She could preside with dignity over a +stately household--receive with grace distinguished guests. Fitted to +administer an ample fortune, ample fortune was necessary to the +development of her excellent qualities. If a man of Darrell's age were +bold enough to marry a young wife, a safer wife amongst the young ladies +of London he could scarcely find; for though Honoria was only three-and- +twenty, she was as staid, as sensible, and as remote from all girlish +frivolities, as if she had been eight-and-thirty. Certainly had Guy +Darrell been of her own years, his fortunes unmade, his fame to win, a +lawyer residing at the back of Holborn, or a pretty squire in the petty +demesnes of Fawley, he would have had no charm in the eyes of Honoria +Vipont. Disparity of years was in this case no drawback but his +advantage, since to that disparity Darrell owed the established name and +the eminent station which made Honoria think she elevated her own self in +preferring him. It is but justice to her to distinguish here between a +woman's veneration for the attributes of respect which a man gathers +round him, and the more vulgar sentiment which sinks the man altogether, +except as the necessary fixture to be taken in with general valuation. +It is not fair to ask if a girl who entertains a preference for one of +our toiling, stirring, ambitious sex, who may be double her age or have a +snub nose, but who looks dignified and imposing on a pedestal of state, +whether she would like him as much if stripped of all his accessories, +and left unredeemed to his baptismal register or unbecoming nose. Just +as well ask a girl in love with a young Lothario if she would like him as +much if he had been ugly and crooked. The high name of the one man is as +much a part of him as good looks are to the other. Thus, though it was +said of Madame de la Valliere that she loved Louis XIV: for himself and +not for his regal grandeur, is there a woman in the world, however +disinterested, who believes that Madame de la Valliere would have liked +Louis XIV. as much if Louis XIV. had been Mr. John Jones; Honoria would +not have bestowed her hand on a brainless, worthless nobleman, whatever +his rank or wealth. She was above that sort of ambition; but neither +would she have married the best-looking and worthiest John Jones who ever +bore that British appellation, if he had not occupied the social position +which brought the merits of a Jones within range of the eyeglass of a +Vipont. + +Many girls in the nursery say to their juvenile confidants, "I will marry +the man I love." Honoria had ever said, "I will only marry the man I +respect." Thus it was her respect for Guy Darrell that made her honour +him by her preference. She appreciated his intellect--she fell in love +with the reputation which the intellect had acquired. And Darrell might +certainly choose worse. His cool reason inclined him much to Honoria. +When Alban Morley argued in her favour, he had no escape from +acquiescence, except in the turns and doubles of his ironical humour. +But his heart was a rebel to his reason; and, between you and me, Honoria +was exactly one of those young women by whom a man of grave years ought +to be attracted, and by whom, somehow or other, he never is; I suspect, +because the older we grow the more we love youthfulness of character. +When Alcides, having gone through all the fatigues of life, took a bride +in Olympus, he ought to have selected Minerva, but he chose Hebe. + +Will Darrell find his Hebe in Flora Vyvyan? Alban Morley became more and +more alarmed by the apprehension. He was shrewd enough to recognise in +her the girl of all others formed to glad the eye and plague the heart of +a grave and reverend seigneur. And it might well not only flatter the +vanity, but beguile the judgment, of a man who feared his hand would be +accepted only for the sake of his money, that Flora just at this moment +refused the greatest match in the kingdom, young Lord Vipont, son of the +new Earl of Montfort, a young man of good sense, high character, well- +looking as men go--heir to estates almost royal; a young man whom no girl +on earth is justified in refusing. But would the whimsical creature +accept Darrell? Was she not merely making sport of him, and if, caught +by her arts, he, sage and elder, solemnly offered homage and hand to that +/belle dedaigneuse/ who had just doomed to despair a comely young magnet +with five times his fortune, would she not hasten to make hirer the +ridicule of London. + +Darrell had perhaps his secret reasons for thinking otherwise, but he did +not confide them even to Alban Morley. This much only will the narrator, +more candid, say to the reader: If out of the three whom his thoughts +fluttered round, Guy Darrell wished to select the one who would love him +best--love him with the whole fresh unreasoning heart of a girl whose +childish forwardness sprang from childlike innocence, let him dare the +hazard of refusal and of ridicule; let him say to Flora Vyvyan, in the +pathos of his sweet deep voice: "Come and be the spoiled darling of my +gladdened age; let my life, ere it sink into night, be rejoiced by the +bloom and fresh breeze of the morning." + +But to say it he must wish it; he himself must love--love with all +the lavish indulgence, all the knightly tenderness, all the grateful +sympathising joy in the youth of the beloved, when youth for the lover +is no more, which alone can realise what we sometimes see, though loth +to own it--congenial unions with unequal years. If Darrell feel not that +love, woe to him, woe and thrice shame if he allure to his hearth one who +might indeed be a Hebe to the spouse who gave up to her his whole heart +in return for hers; but to the spouse who had no heart to give, or gave +but the chips of it, the Hebe indignant would be worse than Erinnys! + +All things considered, then, they who wish well to Guy Darrell must range +with Alban Morley in favour of Miss Honoria Vipont. She, proffering +affectionate respect--Darrell responding by rational esteem. So, +perhaps, Darrell himself thought, for whenever Miss Vipont was named he +became more taciturn, more absorbed in reflection, and sighed heavily, +like a man who slowly makes up his mind to a decision, wise, but not +tempting. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + CONTAINING MUCH OF THAT INFORMATION WHICH THE WISEST MEN IN THE + WORLD COULD NOT GIVE, BUT WHICH THE AUTHOR CAN. + +"Darrell," said Colonel Morley, "you remember my nephew George as a boy? +He is now the rector of Humberston; married--a very nice sort of woman-- +suits him Humberston is a fine living; but his talents are wasted there. +He preached for the first time in London last year, and made a +considerable sensation. This year he has been much out of town. He has +no church here as yet. + +"I hope to get him one. Carr is determined that he shall be a Bisop. +Meanwhile he preaches at--Chapel tomorrow; come and hear him with me, +and then tell me frankly--is he eloquent or not?" + +Darrell had a prejudice against fashionable preachers; but to please +Colonel Morley he went to hear George. He was agreeably surprised by the +pulpit oratory of the young divine. It had that rare combination of +impassioned earnestness with subdued tones, and decorous gesture, which +suits the ideal of ecclesiastical eloquence conceived by an educated +English Churchman + + "Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full." + +Occasionally the old defect in utterance was discernible; there was a +gasp as for breath, or a prolonged dwelling upon certain syllables, +which, occurring in the most animated passages, and apparently evincing +the preacher's struggle with emotion, rather served to heighen the +sympathy of the audience. But, for the most part, the original stammer +was replaced by a felicitous pause, the pause as of a thoughtful reasoner +or a solemn monitor knitting ideas, that came too quick, into method, or +chastening impulse into disciplined zeal. The mind of the preacher, thus +not only freed from trammel, but armed for victory, came forth with that +power which is peculiar to an original intellect--the power which +suggests more than it demonstrates. He did not so much preach to his +audience as wind himself through unexpected ways into the hearts of the +audience; and they who heard suddenly found their hearts preaching to +themselves. He took for his text: "Cast down, but not destroyed;" and +out of this text he framed a discourse full of true Gospel tenderness, +which seemed to raise up comfort as the saving, against despair as the +evil, principle of mortal life. The congregation was what is called +"brilliant"--statesmen, and peers, and great authors, and fine ladies-- +people whom the inconsiderate believe to stand little in need of comfort, +and never to be subjected to despair. In many an intent or drooping +farce in that brilliant congregation might be read a very different tale. +But of all present there was no one whom the discourse so moved as a +woman who, chancing to pass that way, had followed the throng into the +Chapel, and with difficulty obtained a seat at the far end; a woman who +had not been within the walls of a chapel or church for long years-- +a grim woman, in iron grey. There she sate unnoticed, in her remote +corner; and before the preacher had done, her face was hidden behind her +clasped hands, and she was weeping such tears as she had not wept since +childhood. + +On leaving church, Darrell said little more to the Colonel than this: +"Your nephew takes me by surprise. The Church wants such men. He will +have a grand career, if life be spared to him." Then he sank into a +reverie, from which he broke abruptly: "Your nephew was, at school with +my boy. Had my son lived, what had been his career?" + +The Colonel, never encouraging painful subjects, made no rejoinder. + +"Bring George to see me to-morrow. I shrunk from asking it before: +I thought the sight of him would too much revive old sorrows; but I feel +I should accustom myself to face every memory. Bring him." + +The next day the Colonel took George to Darrell's; but George had been +pre-engaged till late at noon, and Darrell was just leaving home, and at +his street door, when the uncle and nephew came. They respected his time +too much to accept his offer to come in, but walked beside him for a few +minutes, as he bestowed upon George those compliments which are sweet to +the ears of rising men from the lips of those who have risen. + +"I remember you, George, as a boy," said Darrell, "and thanked you then +for good advice to a schoolfellow, who is lost to your counsels now." +He faltered an instant, but went on firmly: "You had then a slight defect +in utterance, which, I understand from your uncle, increased as you grew +older; so that I never anticipated for you the fame that you are +achieving. Orator fit--you must have been admirably taught. In the +management of your voice, in the excellence of your delivery, I see that +you are one of the few who deem that the Divine Word should not be +unworthily uttered. The debater on beer bills may be excused from +studying the orator's effects; but all that enforce, dignify, adorn, make +the becoming studies of him who strives by eloquence to people heaven; +whose task it is to adjure the thoughtless, animate the languid, soften +the callous, humble the proud, alarm the guilty, comfort the sorrowful, +call back to the fold the lost. Is the culture to be slovenly where the +glebe is so fertile? The only field left in modern times for the ancient +orator's sublime conceptions, but laborious training, is the Preacher's. +And I own, George, that I envy the masters who skilled to the Preacher's +art an intellect like yours." + +"Masters," said the Colonel. "I thought all those elocution masters +failed with you, George. You cured and taught yourself. Did not you? +No! Why, then, who was your teacher?" + +George looked very much embarrassed, and, attempting to answer, began +horribly to stutter. + +Darrell, conceiving that a preacher whose fame was not yet confirmed +might reasonably dislike to confess those obligations to elaborate study, +which, if known, might detract from his effect or expose him to ridicule, +hastened to change the subject. "You have been to the country, I hear, +George; at your living, I suppose?" + +"No. I have not been there very lately; travelling about." + +"Have you seen Lady Montfort since your return?" asked the Colonel. + +"I only returned on Saturday night. I go to Lady Montfort's at +Twickenham, this evening." + +"She has a delightful retreat," said the Colonel. "But if she wish +to avoid admiration, she should not make the banks of the river her +favourite haunt. I know some romantic admirers, who, when she re-appears +in the world, may be rival aspirants, and who have much taken to rowing +since Lady Montfort has retired to Twickenham. They catch a glimpse of +her, and return to boast of it. But they report that there is a young +lady seen walking with her an extremely pretty one--who is she? People +ask me--as if I knew everything." + +"A companion, I suppose," said George, more and more confused. "But, +pardon me, I must leave you now. Good-bye, uncle. Good day, Mr. +Darrell." + +Darrell did not seem to observe George take leave, but walked on, his hat +over his brows, lost in one of his frequent fits of abstracted gloom. + +"If my nephew were not married," said the Colonel, "I should regard his +embarrassment with much suspicion--embarrassed at every point, from his +travels about the country to the question of a young lady at Twickenham. +I wonder who that young lady can be--not one of the Viponts, or I should +have heard. Are there any young ladies on the Lyndsay side?--Eh, +Darrell?" + +"What do I care?--your head runs on young ladies," answered Darrell, with +peevish vivacity, as he stopped abruptly at Carr Vipont's door. + +"And your feet do not seem to run from them," said the Colonel; and, with +an ironical salute, walked away, while the expanding portals engulfed his +friend. + +As he sauntered up St. James's Street, nodding towards the thronged +windows of its various clubs, the Colonel suddenly enountered Lionel, +and, taking the young gentleman's arm, said: "If you are not very much +occupied, will you waste half an hour on me?--I am going homewards." + +Lionel readily assented, and the Colonel continued "Are you in want +of your cabriolet to-day, or can you lend it to me? I have asked a +Frenchman, who brings me a letter of introduction, to dine at the nearest +restaurant's to which one can ask a Frenchman. I need not say that is +Greenwich: and if I took him in a cabriolet, he would not suspect that he +was taken five miles out of town." + +"Alas, my dear Colonel, I have just sold my cabriolet." What! old- +fashioned already!--True, it has been built three months. Perhaps the +horse, too, has become an antique in some other collection--silent--um! +--cabriolet and horse both sold?" + +"Both," said Lionel, imefully. + +"Nothing surprises me that man can do," said the Colonel; "or I should be +surprised. When, acting on Darrell's general instructions for your +outfit, I bought that horse, I flattered myself that I had chosen well. +But rare are good horses--rarer still a good judge of them; I suppose I +was cheated, and the brute proved a screw." + +"The finest cab-horse in London, my dear Colonel, and every one knows how +proud I was of him. But I wanted money, and had nothing else that would +bring the sum I required. Oh, Colonel Morley, do hear me?" + +"Certainly, I am not deaf, nor is St. James's Street. When a man says, +'I have parted with my horse because I wanted money,' I advise him to say +it in a whisper." + +"I have been imprudent, at least unlucky, and I must pay the penalty. A +friend of mine--that is, not exactly a friend, but an acquaintance--whom +I see every day--one of my own set-asked me to sign my name at Paris to a +bill at three months' date, as his security. He gave me his honour that +I should hear no more of it--he would be sure to take up the bill when +due--a man whom I supposed to be as well off as myself! You will allow +that I could scarcely refuse--at all events, I did not. The bill became +due two days ago; my friend does not pay it, and indeed says he cannot, +and the holder of the bill calls on me. He was very civil-offered to +renew it--pressed me to take my time, &c.; but I did not like his manner: +and as to my friend, I find that, instead of being well off, as I +supposed, he is hard up, and that I am not the first he has got into the +same scrape--not intending it, I am sure. He's really a very good +fellow, and, if I wanted security, would be it to-morrow to any amount." + +"I've no doubt of it--to any amount!" said the Colonel. + +"So I thought it best to conclude the matter at once. I had saved +nothing from my allowance, munificent as it is. I could not have the +face to ask Mr. Darrell to remunerate me for my own imprudence. I should +not like to borrow from my mother--I know it would be inconvenient to +her. + +"I sold both horse and cabriolet this morning. I had just been getting +the cheque cashed when I met you. I intend to take the money myself to +the bill-holder. I have just the sum--L200." + +"The horse alone was worth that," said the Colonel, with a faint sigh--" +not to be replaced. France and Russia have the pick of our stables. +However, if it is sold, it is sold--talk no more of it. I hate painful +subjects. You did right not to renew the bill--it is opening an account +with Ruin; and though I avoid preaching on money matters, or, indeed, any +other (preaching is my nephew's vocation, not mine), yet allow me to +extract from you a solemn promise never again to sign bills, nor to draw +them. Be to your friend what you please except security for him. +Orestes never asked Pylades to help him to borrow at fifty per cent. +Promise me--your word of honour as a gentleman! Do you hesitate?" + +"My dear Colonel," said Lionel frankly, "I do hesitate. I might promise +not to sign a money-lender's bill on my own account, though really I +think you take rather an exaggerated view of what is, after all, a common +occurrence--" + +"Do I?" said the Colonel meekly. "I'm sorry to hear it. I detest +exaggeration. Go on. You might promise not to ruin yourself--but you +object to promise not to help in the ruin of your friend." + +"That is exquisite irony, Colonel," said Lionel, piqued; but it does not +deal with the difficulty, which is simply this: When a man whom you call +friend--whom you walk with, ride with, dine with almost every day, says +to you 'I am in immediate want of a few hundreds--I don't ask you to lend +them to me, perhaps you can't--but assist me to borrow--trust to my +honour that the debt shall not fall on you,--why, then, it seems as if to +refuse the favour was to tell the man you call friend that you doubt his +honour; and though I have been caught once in that way, I feel that I +must be caught very often before I should have the moral courage to say +'No!' Don't ask me, then to promise--be satisfied with my assurance that, +in future at least, I will be more cautious, and if the loss fall on me, +why, the worst that can happen is to do again what I do now." + +"Nay, you would not perhaps have another horse and cab to sell. In that +case, you would do the reverse of what you do now--you would renew the +bill--the debt would run on like a snowball--in a year or two you would +owe, not hundreds, but thousands. But come in--here we are at my door." + +The Colonel entered his drawing-room. A miracle of exquisite neatness +the room was--rather effeminate, perhaps, in its attributes; but that was +no sign of the Colonel's tastes, but of his popularity with the ladies. +All those pretty things were their gifts. The tapestry on the chairs +their work--the Sevres on the consoles--the clock on the mantel-shelf-- +the inkstand, paper-cutter, taper-stand on the writing-table--their +birthday presents. Even the white woolly Maltese dog that sprang from +the rug to welcome him--even the flowers in the jardiniere--even the +tasteful cottage-piano, and the very music-stand beside it--and the card- +trays, piled high with invitations,--were contributions from the +forgiving sex to the unrequiting bachelor. + +Surveying his apartment with a complacent air, the Colonel sank into his +easy /fauteuil/, and drawing off his gloves leisurely said-- + +"No man has more friends than I have--never did I lose one--never did +I sign a bill. Your father pursued a different policy--he signed many +bills--and lost many friends." Lionel, much distressed, looked down, and +evidently desired to have done with the subject. Not so the Colonel. +That shrewd man, though he did not preach, had a way all his own, which +was perhaps quite as effective as any sermon by a fashionable layman can +be to an impatient youth. + +"Yes," resumed the Colonel, "it is the old story. One always begins by +being security to a friend. The discredit of the thing is familiarised +to one's mind by the false show of generous confidence in another. Their +what you have done for a friend, a friend should do for you;--a hundred +or two would be useful now--you are sure to repay it in three months. +To Youth the Future seems safe as the Bank of England, and distant as the +peaks of Himalaya. You pledge your honour that in three months you will +release your friend. The three months expire. To release the one +friend, you catch hold of another--the bill is renewed, premium and +interest thrown into the next pay-day--soon the account multiplies, and +with it the honour dwindles--your NAME circulates from hand to hand on +the back of doubtful paper--your name, which, in all money transactions, +should grow higher and higher each year you live, falling down every +month like the shares in a swindling speculation. You begin by what you +call trusting a friend, that is, aiding him to self-destruction--buying +him arsenic to clear his complexion--you end by dragging all near you +into your own abyss, as a drowning man would clutch at his own brother. +Lionel Haughton, the saddest expression I ever saw in your father's face +was when--when--but you shall hear the story--" + +"No, sir; spare me. Since you so insist on it, I will give the promise-- +it is enough; and my father--" + +"Was as honourable as you when he first signed his name to a friend's +bill; and, perhaps, promised to do so no more as reluctantly as you do. +You had better let me say on; if I stop now, you will forget all about it +by this day twelve-month; if I go on, you will never forget. There are +other examples besides your father; I am about to name one." + +Lionel resigned himself to the operation, throwing his handkerchief over +his face as if he had taken chloroform. "When I was young," resumed the +Colonel, "I chanced to make acquaintance with a man of infinite whim and +humour; fascinating as Darrell himself, though in a very different way. +We called him Willy--you know the kind of man one calls by his Christian +name, cordially abbreviated--that kind of man seems never to be quite +grown up; and, therefore, never rises in life. I never knew a man called +Willy after the age of thirty, who did not come to a melancholy end! +Willy was the natural son of a rich, helter-skelter, cleverish, maddish, +stylish, raffish, four-in-hand Baronet, by a celebrated French actress. +The title is extinct now, and so, I believe, is that genus of stylish, +raffish, four-in-hand Baronet--Sir Julian Losely--" + +"Losely!" echoed Lionel. "Yes; do you know the name?" + +"I never heard it till yesterday. I want to tell you what I did hear +then--but after your story--go on." + +"Sir Julian Losely (Willy's father) lived with the French lady as his +wife, and reared Willy in his house, with as much pride and fondness as +if he intended him for his heir. The poor boy, I suspect, got but little +regular education; though of course, he spoke his French mother's tongue +like a native; and, thanks also perhaps to his mother, he had an +extraordinary talent for mimicry and acting. His father was passionately +fond of private theatricals, and Willy had early practice in that line. +I once saw him act Falstaff in a country house, and I doubt if Quin could +have acted it better. Well, when Willy was still a mere boy, he lost his +mother, the actress. Sir Julian married--had a legitimate daughter--died +intestate--and the daughter, of course, had the personal property, which +was not much; the heir-at-law got the land, and poor Willy nothing. But +Willy was an universal favourite with his father's old friends--wild +fellows like Sir Julian himself amongst them there were two cousins, with +large country-houses, sporting-men, and bachelors. They shared Willy +between them, and quarrelled which should have the most of him. So he +grew up to be man, with no settled provision, but always welcome, not +only to the two cousins, but at every house in which, like Milton's lark, +'he came to startle the dull night'--the most amusing companion!-- +a famous shot--a capital horseman--knew the ways of all animals, fishes, +and birds; I verily believe he could have coaxed a pug-dog to point, and +an owl to sing. Void of all malice, up to all fun. Imagine how much +people would court, and how little they would do for, a Willy of that +sort. Do I bore you?" + +"On the contrary, I am greatly interested." + +"One thing a Willy, if a Willy could be wise, ought to do for himself-- +keep single. A wedded Willy is in a false position. My Willy wedded-- +for love too--an amiable girl, I believe (I never saw her; it was long +afterwards that I knew Willy)--but as poor as himself. The friends and +relatives then said: 'This is serious: something--must be done for +Willy.' It was easy to say, 'something must be done,' and monstrous +difficult to do it. While the relations were consulting, his half- +sister, the Baronet's lawful daughter, died, unmarried; and though she +had ignored him in life, left him L2,000. 'I have hit it now, 'cried one +of the cousins; 'Willy is fond of a country life. I will let him have a +farm on a nominal rent, his L2,000 will stock it; and his farm, which is +surrounded by woods, will be a capital hunting-meet. As long as I live, +Willy shall be mounted.' + +"Willy took the farm, and astonished his friends by attending to it. It +was just beginning to answer when his wife died, leaving him only one +child--a boy; and her death made him so melancholy that he could no +longer attend to his farm. He threw it up, invested the proceeds as a +capital, and lived on the interest as a gentleman at large. He travelled +over Europe for some time--chiefly on foot--came back, having recovered +his spirits--resumed his old desultory purposeless life at different +country-houses, and at one of those houses I and Charles Haughton met +him. Here I pause, to state that Willy Losely at that time impressed me +with the idea that he was a thoroughly honest man. Though he was +certainly no formalist--though he had lived with wild sets of convivial +scapegraces--though, out of sheer high spirits, he would now and then +make conventional Proprieties laugh at their own long faces; yet, I +should have said that Bayard himself--and Bayard was no saint--could not +have been more incapable of a disloyal, rascally, shabby action. Nay, in +the plain matter of integrity, his ideas might be called refined, almost +Quixotic. If asked to give or to lend, Willy's hand was in his pocket in +an instant; but though thrown among rich men--careless as himself--Willy +never put his hand into their pockets, never borrowed, never owed. He +would accept hospitality--make frank use of your table, your horses, your +dogs--but your money, no! He repaid all he took from a host by rendering +himself the pleasantest guest that host ever entertained. Poor Willy! I +think I see his quaint smile brimming over with sly sport! The sound of +his voice was like a cry of 'o-half-holiday' in a schoolroom. He +dishonest! I should as soon have suspected the noonday sun of being a +dark lantern! I remember, when he and I were walking home from wild-duck +shooting in advance of our companions, a short conversation between us +that touched me greatly, for it showed that, under all his levity, there +were sound sense and right feeling. I asked him about his son, then a +boy at school: 'Why, as it was the Christmas vacation, he had refused our +host's suggestion to let the lad come down there?' 'Ah,' said he, 'don't +fancy that I will lead my son to grow up a scatterbrained good-for-nought +like his father. His society is the joy of my life; whenever I have +enough in my pockets to afford myself that joy, I go and hire a quiet +lodging close by his school, to have him with me from Saturday till +Monday all to myself--where he never hears wild fellows call me "Willy," +and ask me to mimic. I had hoped to have spent this vacation with him in +that way, but his school bill was higher than usual, and after paying it, +I had not a guinea to spare--obliged to come here where they lodge and +feed me for nothing; the boy's uncle on the mother's side--respectable +man in business--kindly takes him home for the holidays; but did not ask +me, because his wife--and I don't blame her--thinks I'm too wild for a +City clerk's sober household.' + +"I asked Willy Losely what he meant to do with his son, and hinted that I +might get the boy a commission in the army without purchase. + +"'No,' said Willy. 'I know what it is to set up for a gentleman on the +capital of a beggar. It is to be a shuttlecock between discontent and +temptation. I would not have my lost wife's son waste his life as I have +done. He would be more spoiled, too, than I have been. The handsomest +boy you ever saw-and bold as a lion. Once in that set' (pointing over +his shoulder towards some of our sporting comrades, whose loud laughter +every now and then reached our ears)--'once in that set, he would never +be out of it--fit for nothing. I swore to his mother on her death-bed +that I would bring him up to avoid my errors--that he should be no +hanger-on and led-captain! Swore to her that he should be reared +according to his real station--the station of his mother's kin--(I have +no station)--and if I can but see him an honest British trader-- +respectable, upright, equal to the highest--because no rich man's +dependant, and no poor man's jest--my ambition will be satisfied. And +now you understand, sir, why my boy is not here.' You would say a father +who spoke thus had a man's honest stuff in him. Eh, Lionel!" + +"Yes, and a true gentleman's heart, too!" + +"So I thought; yet I fancied I knew the world! After that conversation, +I quitted our host's roof, and only once or twice afterwards, at country- +houses, met William Losely again. To say truth, his chief patrons and +friends were not exactly in my set. But your father continued to see +Willy pretty often. They took a great fancy to each other. Charlie, you +know, was jovial--fond of private theatricals, too; in short, they became +great allies. Some years after, as ill-luck would have it, Charles +Haughton, while selling off his Middlesex property, was in immediate want +of L1,200. He could get it on a bill, but not without security. His +bills were already rather down in the market, and he had already +exhausted most of the friends whose security was esteemed by +accommodators any better than his own. In an evil hour he had learned +that poor Willy had just L1,500 out upon mortgage; and the money-lender, +who was lawyer for the property on which the mortgage was, knew it too. +It was on the interest of this L1,500 that Willy lived, having spent the +rest of his little capital in settling his son as a clerk in a first-rate +commercial house. Charles Haughton went down to shoot at the house where +Willy was a guest-shot with him--drank with him--talked with him--proved to +him, no doubt, that long before the three months were over the Middlesex +property would be sold; the bill taken up, Willy might trust to his +Honour. Willy did trust. Like you, my dear Lionel, he had not moral +courage to say 'No.' Your father, I am certain, meant to repay him; your +father never in cold blood meant to defraud any human being; but--your +father gambled! A debt of honour at piquet preceded the claim of a bill- +discounter. The L1,200 were forestalled--your father was penniless. The +money-lender came upon Willy. Sure that Charles Haughton would yet +redeem his promise, Willy renewed the bill another three months on +usurious terms; those months over, he came to town to find your father +hiding between four walls, unable to stir out for fear of arrest. Willy +had no option but to pay the money; and when your father knew that it was +so paid, and that the usury had swallowed up the whole of Willy's little +capital, then, I say, I saw upon Charles Haughton's once radiant face the +saddest expression I ever saw on mortal man's. And sure I am that all +the joys your father ever knew as a man of pleasure were not worth the +agony and remorse of that moment. I respect your emotion, Lionel, but +you begin as your father began; and if I had not told you this story, you +might have ended as your father ended." + +Lionel's face remained covered, and it was only by choking gasps that he +interrupted--the Colonel's narrative. "Certainly," resumed Alban Morley, +in a reflective tone "certainly that villain--I mean William Losely, for +villain he afterwards proved to be--had the sweetest, most forgiving +temper! He might have gone about to his kinsmen and friends denouncing +Charles Haughton, and saying by what solemn promises he had been undone. +But no! such a story just at that moment would have crushed Charles +Haughton's last chance of ever holding up his head again, and Charles +told me (for it was through Charles that I knew the tale) that Willy's +parting words to him were 'Do not fret, Charles--after all, my boy is now +settled in life, and I am a cat with nine lives, and should fall on my +legs if thrown out of a garret window. Don't fret.' So he kept the +secret, and told the money-lender to hold his tongue. Poor Willy! I +never asked a rich friend to lend me money but once in my life. It was +then I went to Guy Darrell, who was in full practice, and said to him: +'Lend me one thousand pounds. I may never repay you.' 'Five thousand +pounds, if you like it,' said he. 'One will do.' + +"I took the money and sent it to Willy. Alas! he returned it, writing +word that 'Providence had been very kind to him; he had just been +appointed to a capital place, with a magnificent salary.' The cat had +fallen on its legs. He bade me comfort Haughton with that news. The +money went back into Darrell's pocket, and perhaps wandered thence to +Charles Haughton's creditors. Now for the appointment. At the country- +house to which Willy had returned destitute, he had met a stranger (no +relation), who said to him: 'You live with these people--shoot their game +--break in their horses--see to their farms--and they give you nothing! +You are no longer very young--you should lay by your little income, and +add to it. Live with me and I will give you L300 a-year. I am parting +with my steward--take his place, but be my friend.' William Losely of +course closed with the proposition. This gentleman, whose name was +Gunston, I had known slightly in former times--(people say I know +everybody)--a soured, bilious, melancholy, indolent, misanthropical old +bachelor. With a splendid place universally admired, and a large estate +universally envied, he lived much alone, ruminating on the bitterness of +life and the nothingness of worldly blessings. Meeing Willy at the +country-house to which, by some predestined relaxation of misanthropy, +he had been decoyed-for the first time for years Mr. Gunston was heard to +laugh. He said to himself, 'Here is a man who actually amuses me.' +William Losely contrived to give the misanthrope a new zest of existence; +and when he found that business could be made pleasant, the rich man +conceived an interest in his own house, gardens, property. For the sake +of William's merry companionship, he would even ride over his farms, and +actually carried a gun. Meanwhile, the property, I am told, was really +well managed. Ah! that fellow Willy was a born genius, and could have +managed everybody's affairs except his own. I heard of all this with +pleasure--(people say I hear everything)--when one day a sporting man +seizes me by the button at Tattersall's--'Do you know the news? Will +Losely is in prison on a charge; of robbing his employer.'" + +"Robbing! incredible!" exclaimed Lionel. + +"My dear Lionel, it was after hearing that news that I established as +invariable my grand maxim, /Nil admirari/--never to be astonished at +anything!" + +"But of course he was innocent?" + +"On the contrary, he confessed,--was committed; pleaded guilty, and was +transported! People who knew Willy said that Gunston ought to have +declined to drag him before a magistrate, or, at the subsequent trial, +have abstained from giving evidence against him; that Willy had been till +then a faithful steward; the whole proceeds of the estate lead passed +through his hands; he might, in transactions for timber, have cheated +undetected to twice the amount of the alleged robbery; it must have been +a momentary aberration of reason; the rich man should have let him off. +But I side with the rich man. His last belief in his species was +annihilated. He must have been inexorable. He could never be amused, +never be interested again. He was inexorable and--vindictive." + +"But what were the facts?--what was the evidence?" + +"Very little came out on the trial; because, in pleading guilty, the +court had merely to consider the evidence which had sufficed to commit +him. The trial was scarcely noticed in the London papers. William +Losely was not like a man known about town. His fame was confined to +those who resorted to old-fashioned country-houses, chiefly single men, +for the sake of sport. But stay. I felt such an interest in the case, +that I made an abstract or praecis, not only of all that appeared, but +all that I could learn of its leading circumstances. 'Tis a habit +of mine, whenever any of my acquaintances embroil themselves with the +Crown--" The Colonel rose, unlocked a small glazed bookcase, selected +from the contents a MS. volume, reseated himself, turning the pages, +found the place sought, and reading from it, resumed his narriative. +"One evening Mr. Gunston came to William Losely's private apartment. +Losely had two or three rooms appropriated to himself in one side of the +house; which was built in a quadrangle round a courtyard. When Losely +opened his door to Mr. Gunston's knock, it struck Mr. Gunston that his +manner seemed confused. After some talk on general subjects, Losely said +that he had occasion to go to London next morning for a few days on +private business of his own. This annoyed Mr. Gunston. He observed that +Losely's absence just then would be inconvenient. He reminded him that a +tradesman, who lived at a distance, was coming over the next day to be +paid for a vinery he had lately erected, and on the charge for which +there was a dispute. Could not Losely at least stay to settle it? +Losely replied, 'that he had already, by correspondence, adjusted the +dispute, having suggested deductions which the tradesman had agreed to, +and that Mr. Gunston would only have to give a cheque for the balance- +viz. L270.' Thereon Mr. Gunston remarked: 'If you were not in the habit +of paying my bills for me out of what you receive, you would know that I +seldom give cheques. I certainly shall not give one now, for I have the +money in the house.' Losely observed 'That is a bad habit of yours +keeping large sums in your own house. You may be robbed.' Gunston +answered 'Safer than lodging large sums in a country bank. Country banks +break. My grandfather lost L1,000 by the failure of a country bank; and +my father, therefore, always took his payments in cash, remitting them to +London from time to time as he went thither himself. I do the same, and +I have never been robbed of a farthing that I know of. Who would rob a +great house like this, full of menservants?'--'That's true,' said Losely; +'so if you are sure you have as much by you, you will pay the bill and +have done with it. I shall be back before Sparks the builder comes to be +paid for the new barn to the home farm-that will be L600; but I shall be +taking money for timber next week. He can be paid out of that.' + +GUNSTON.--'No. I will pay Sparks, too, out of what I have in my bureau; +and the timber-merchant can pay his debt into my London banker's.' + +LOSELY.--'DO you mean that you have enough for both these bills actually +in the house?' + +GUNSTON.--'Certainly, in the bureau in my study. I don't know how +much I've got. It may be L1,500--it may be L1,700. I have not counted; +I am such a bad man of business; but I am sure it is more than L1,400.' +Losely made some jocular observation to the effect that if Gunston never +kept an account of what be had, he could never tell whether he was +robbed, and, therefore, never would be robbed; since, according to +Othello, + + 'He that is robbed, not wanting what is stolen, + Let him not know it, and He's not robbed at all.' + +"After that, Losely became absent in manner, and seemed impatient to get +rid of Mr. Gunston, hinting that he had the labour-book to look over, and +some orders to write out for the bailiff, and that he should start early +the next morning." + +Here the Colonel looked up from his MS., and said episodically: "Perhaps +you will fancy that these dialogues are invented by me after the fashion +of the ancient historians? Not so. I give you the report of what +passed, as Gunston repeated it verbatim; and I suspect that his memory +was pretty accurate. Well (here Alban returned to his MS.) Gunston left +Willy, and went into his own study, where he took tea by himself. When +his valet brought it in, he told the man that Mr. Losely was going to +town early the next morning, and ordered the servant to see himself that +coffee was served to Mr. Losely before he went. The servant observed +'that Mr. Losely had seemed much out of sorts lately, and that it was +perhaps some unpleasant affair connected with the gentleman who had come +to see him two days before.' Gunston had not heard of such a visit. + +"Losely had not mentioned it. When the servant retired, Gunston, thinking +over Losely's quotation respecting his money, resolved to ascertain what +he had in his bureau. He opened it, examined the drawers, and found, +stowed away in different places at different times, a larger sum than he +had supposed--gold and notes to the amount of L1,975, of which nearly +L300 were in sovereigns. He smoothed the notes carefully; and, for want +of other occupation, and with a view of showing Losely that he could +profit by a hint, he entered the numbers of the notes in his pocketbook, +placed them all together in one drawer with the gold, relocked his +bureau, and went shortly afterwards to bed. The next day (Losely having +gone in the morning) the tradesman came to be paid for the vinery. +Gunston went to his bureau, took out his notes, and found L250 were gone. +He could hardly believe his senses. Had he made a mistake in counting? +No. There was his pocket book, the missing notes entered duly therein. +Then he re-re-counted the sovereigns; 142 were gone of them--nearly +L400 in all thus abstracted. He refused at first to admit suspicion of +Losely; but, on interrogating his servants, the valet deposed, that he +was disturbed about two o'clock in the morning by the bark of the house- +dog, which was let loose of a night within the front courtyard of the +house. Not apprehending robbers, but fearing the dog might also disturb +his master, he got out of his window (being on the ground-flour) to +pacify the animal; that he then saw, in the opposite angle of the +building, a light moving along the casement of the passage between +Losely's rooms and Mr. Gunston's study. Surprised at this, at such an +hour, he approached that part of the building and saw the light very +faintly through the chinks in the shutters of the study. The passage +windows had no shutters, being old-fashioned stone mullions. He waited +by the wall a few minutes, when the light again reappeared in the +passage; and he saw a figure in a cloak, which, being in a peculiar +colour, he recognised at once as Losely's, pass rapidly along; but before +the figure had got half through the passage, the light was extinguished, +and the servant could see no more. But so positive was he, from his +recognition of the cloak, that the man was Losely, that he ceased to feel +alarm or surprise, thinking, on reflection, that Losely, sitting up later +than usual to transact business before his departure, might have gone +into his employer's study for any book or paper which he might have left +there. The dog began barking again, and seemed anxious to get out of the +courtyard to which he was confined; but the servant gradually +appeased him--went to bed, and somewhat overslept himself. When he +awoke, he hastened to take the coffee into Losely's room, but Losely was +gone. Here there was another suspicious circumstance. It had been a +question how the bureau had been opened, the key being safe in Gunston's +possession, and there being no sign of force. The lock was one of those +rude old-fashioned ones which are very easily picked, but to which a +modern key does not readily fit. In the passage there was found a long +nail crooked at the end; and that nail, the superintendent of the police +(who had been summoned) had the wit to apply to the lock of the bureau, +and it unlocked and re-locked it easily. It was clear that whoever had +so shaped the nail could not have used such an instrument for the first +time, and must be a practised picklock. That, one would suppose at +first, might exonerate Losely; but he was so clever a fellow at all +mechanical contrivances that, coupled with the place of finding, the nail +made greatly against him; and still more so when some nails precisely +similar were found on the chimney-piece of an inner room in his +apartment, a room between that in which he had received Guar ston and his +bed-chamber, and used by him both as study and workshop. The nails, +indeed, which were very long and narrow, with a Gothic ornamental head, +were at once recognised by the carpenter on the estate as having been +made according to Losely's directions, for a garden bench to be placed in +Gunston's favourite walk, Gunston having remarked, some days before, that +he should like a seat there, and Losely having undertaken to make one +from a design by Pugin. Still loth to believe in Losely's guilt, Gunston +went to London with the police superintendent, the valet, and the +neighbouring attorney. They had no difficulty in finding Losely; he was +at his son's lodgings in the City, near the commercial house in which the +son was a clerk. On being told of the robbery, he seemed at first +unaffectedly surprised, evincing no fear. He was asked whether he had +gone into the study about two o'clock in the morning. He said, 'No; why +should I?' The valet exclaimed: 'But I saw you--I knew you by that old +grey cloak, with the red lining. Why, there it is now--on that chair +yonder. I'll swear it is the same.' Losely then began to tremble +visibly, and grew extremely pale. A question was next put to him as to +the nail, but he secured quite stupefied, muttering: 'Good heavens! the +cloak--you mean to say you saw that cloak?' They searched his person- +found on him some sovereigns, silver, and one bank-note for five pounds. +The number on that bank-note corresponded with a number in Gunston's +pocket-book. He was asked to say where he got that five-pound note. He +refused to answer. Gunston said: 'It is one of the notes stolen from +me!' Losely cried fiercely: 'Take care what you say. How do you know?' +Gunston replied: 'I took an account of the numbers of my notes on leaving +your room. Here is the memorandum in my pocket-book--see--' Losely +looked, and fell back as if shot. Losely's brother-in-law was in the +room at the time, and he exclaimed, 'Oh, William! you can't be guilty. +You are the honestest fellow in the world. There must be some mistake, +gentlemen. Where did you get the note, William--say?' + +"Losely made no answer, but seemed lost in thought or stupefaction. 'I +will go for your son, William--perhaps he may help to explain.' Losely +then seemed to wake up. 'My son! what! would you expose me before my +son? he's gone into the country, as you know. What has he to do with +it? I took the notes--there--I have confessed. --Have done with it,'-- +or words to that effect. + +"Nothing more of importance," said the Colonel, turning over the leaves +of his MS., "except to account for the crime. And here we come back to +the money-lender. You remember the valet said that a gentleman had +called on Losely two days before the robbery. This proved to be the +identical bill-discounter to whom Losely had paid away his fortune. This +person deposed that Losely had written to him some days before, stating +that he wanted to borrow two or three hundred pounds, which he could +repay by instalments out of his salary. What would be the terms? The +money-lender, having occasion to be in the neighbourhood, called to +discuss the matter in person, and to ask if Losely could not get some +other person to join in security--suggesting his brother-in-law. Losely +replied that it was a favour he would never ask of any one; that his +brother-in-law had no pecuniary means beyond his salary as a senior +clerk; and, supposing that he (Losely) lost his place, which he might any +day, if Gunston were displeased with him--how then could he be sure that +his debt would not fall on the security? Upon which the money-lender +remarked that the precarious nature of his income was the very reason why +a security was wanted. And Losely answered, 'Ay; but you know that you +incur that risk, and charge accordingly. Between me and you the debt and +the hazard are mere matter of business, but between me and my security it +would be a matter of honour.' Finally the money-lender agreed to find +the sum required, though asking very high terms. Losely said he would +consider, and let him know. There the conversation ended. But Gunston +inquired 'if Losely had ever had dealings with the money-lender before, +and for what purpose it was likely he would leant the money now;' and the +money-lender answered 'that probably Losely had some sporting or gaming +speculations on the sly, for that it was to pay a gambling debt that he +had joined Captain Haughton in a bill for L1,200.' And Gunston +afterwards told a friend of mine that this it was that decided him to +appear as a witness at the trial; and you will observe that if Gunston +had kept away there would have been no evidence sufficient to insure +conviction. But Gunston considered that the man who could gamble away +his whole fortune must be incorrigible, and that Losely, having concealed +from him that he had become destitute by such transactions, must have +been more than a mere security in a joint bill with Captain Haughton. + +"Gunston could never have understood such an inconsistency in human +nature, that the same man who broke open his bureau should have become +responsible to the amount of his fortune for a debt of which he had not +shared the discredit, and still less that such a man should, in case he +had been so generously imprudent, have concealed his loss out of delicate +tenderness for the character of the man to whom he owed his ruin. +Therefore, in short, Gunston looked on his dishonest steward not as a man +tempted by a sudden impulse in some moment of distress, at which a +previous life was belied, but as a confirmed, dissimulating sharper, to +whom public justice allowed no mercy. And thus, Lionel, William Losely +was prosecuted, tried, and sentenced to seven years' transportation. By +pleading guilty, the term was probably made shorter than it otherwise +would have been." + +Lionel continued too agitated for words. The Colonel, not seeming to +heed his emotions, again ran his eye over the MS. + +"I observe here that there are some queries entered as to the evidence +against Losely. The solicitor whom, when I heard of his arrest, I +engaged and sent down to the place on his behalf--" + +"You did! Heaven reward you!" sobbed out Lionel. "But my father?-- +where was he?" + +"Then?--in his grave." + +Lionel breathed a deep sigh, as of thankfulness. + +"The lawyer, I say--a sharp fellow--was of opinion that if Losely had +refused to plead guilty, he could have got him off in spite of his first +confession--turned the suspicion against some one else. In the passage +where the nail was picked up there was a door into the park. That door +was found unbolted in the inside the next morning: a thief might +therefore have thus entered and passed at once into the study. The nail +was discovered close by the door; the thief might have dropped it on +putting out his light, which, by the valet's account, he must have done +when he was near the door in question, and required the light no more. +Another circumstance in Losely's favour: just outside the door, near a +laurel-bush, was found the fag-end of one of those small rose-coloured +wax-lights which are often placed in Lucifer-match boxes. If this had +been used by the thief, it would seem as if, extinguishing the light +before he stepped into the air, he very naturally jerked away the morsel +of taper left, when, in the next moment, he was out of the house. But +Losely would not have gone out of the house; nor was he, nor any one +about the premises, ever known to make use of that kind of taper, which +would rather appertain to the fashionable fopperies of a London dandy. +You will have observed, too, the valet had not seen the thief's face. +His testimony rested solely on the colours of a cloak, which, on cross- +examination; might have gone for nothing. The dog had barked before the +light was seen. It was not the light that made him bark. He wished to +get out of the courtyard; that looked as if there were some stranger in +the grounds beyond. Following up this clue, the lawyer ascertained that +a strange man had been seen in the park towards the grey of the evening, +walking up in the direction of the house. And here comes the strong +point. At the railway station, about five miles from Mr. Gunston's, a +strange man had arrived just in time to take his place in the night-train +from the north towards London, stopping there at four o'clock in the +morning. The station-master remembered the stranger buying the ticket, +but did not remark his appearance. The porter did, however, so far +notice him as he hurried into a first-class carriage, that he said +afterwards to the stationmaster: 'Why, that gentleman has a grey cloak +just like Mr. Losely's. If he had not been thinner and taller, I should +have thought it was Mr. Losely.' Well, Losely went to the same station +the next morning, taking an early train, going thither on foot, with his +carpet-bag in his hand; and both the porter and station-master declared +that he had no cloak on him at the time; and as he got into a second- +class carriage, the porter even said to him: "Tis a sharp morning, sir; +I'm afraid you'll be cold.' Furthermore, as to the purpose for which +Losely had wished to borrow of the money-lender, his brother-in-law +stated that Losely's son had been extravagant, had contracted debts, and +was even hiding from his creditors in a county town, at which William +Losely had stopped for a few hours on his way to London. He knew the +young man's employer had written kindly to Losely several days before, +lamenting the son's extravagance; intimating that unless his debts were +discharged he must lose the situation, in which otherwise he might soon +rise to competence, for that he was quick and sharp; and that it was +impossible not to feel indulgent towards him, he was so lively and so +good-looking. The trader added that he would forbear to dismiss the +young man as long as he could. It was on the receipt of that letter that +Losely had entered into communication with the money-lender, whom he had +come to town to seek, and to whose house he was actually going at the +very hour of Gunston's arrival. But why borrow of the money-lender, if +he had just stolen more money than he had any need to borrow? + +The most damning fact against Losely, by the discovery in his possession +of the L5 note, of which Mr. Gunston deposed to have taken the number, +was certainly hard to get over; still an ingenious lawyer might have +thrown doubt on Gunstun's testimony--a man confessedly so careless might +have mistaken the number, &c. The lawyer went, with these hints for +defence, to see Losely himself in prison; but Losely declined his help-- +became very angry--said that he would rather suffer death itself than +have suspicion transferred to some innocent man; and that, as to the +cloak, it had been inside his carpet-bag. So you see, bad as he was, +there was something inconsistently honourable left in him still. Poor +Willy! he would not even subpeena any of his old friends as to his +general character. But even if he had, what could the Court do since he +pleaded guilty? And now dismiss that subject, it begins to pain me +extremely. You were to speak to me about some one of the same name when +my story was concluded. What is it?" + +"I am so confused," faltered Lionel, still quivering with emotion, "that +I can scarcely answer you--scarcely recollect myself. But--but--while +you were describing this poor William Losely, his talent for mimicry and +acting, I could not help thinking that I had seen him." Lionel proceeded +to speak of Gentleman Waife. "Can that be the man?" + +Alban shook his head incredulously. He thought it so like a romantic +youth to detect imaginary resemblances. + +"No," said he, "my dear boy. My William Losely could never become a +strolling-player in a village fair. Besides, I have good reason to +believe that Willy is well off; probably made money in the colony by some +lucky hit for when do you say you saw your stroller? Five years ago? +Well, not very long before that date-perhaps a year or two-less than two +years, I am sure-this eccentric rascal sent Mr. Gunston, the man who had +transported him, L100! Gunston, you must know, feeling more than ever +bored and hipped when he lost Willy, tried to divert himself by becoming +director in some railway company. The company proved a bubble; all +turned their indignation on the one rich man who could pay where others +cheated. Gunston was ruined--purse and character--fled to Calais; and +there, less than seven years ago, when in great distress, he received +from poor Willy a kind, affectionate, forgiving letter, and L100. I have +this from Gunston's nearest relation, to whom he told it, crying like a +child. Willy gave no address! but it is clear that at the time he must +have been too well off to turn mountebank at your miserable exhibition. +Poor, dear, rascally, infamous, big-hearted Willy," burst out the +Colonel. "I wish to heaven he had only robbed me!" + +"Sir," said Lionel, "rely upon it, that man you described never robbed +any one--'tis impossible." + +"No--very possible!--human nature," said Alban Morley. "And, after all, +he really owed Gunston that L100. For, out of the sum stolen, Gunston +received anonymously, even before the trial, all the missing notes, minus +about that L100; and Willy, therefore, owed Gunston the money, but not, +perhaps, that kind, forgiving letter. Pass on--quick--the subject is +worse than the gout. You have heard before the name of Losely--possibly. +There are many members of the old Baronet's family; but when or where did +you hear it?" + +"I will tell you; the man who holds the bill (ah, the word sickens me) +reminded me when he called that I had seen him at my mother's house--a +chance acquaintance of hers--professed great regard for me--great +admiration for Mr. Darrell--and then surprised me by asking if I had +never heard Mr. Darrell speak of Mr. Jasper Losely." + +"Jasper!" said the Colonel; "Jasper!--well, go on." "When I answered, +'No,' Mr. Poole (that is his name) shook his head, and muttered: 'A sad +affair--very bad business--I could do Mr. Darrell a great service if he +would let me;' and then went on talking what seemed to me impertinent +gibberish about 'family exposures' and 'poverty making men desperate,' +and 'better compromise matters;' and finally wound up by begging me, 'if +I loved Mr. Darrell, and wished to guard him from very great annoyance +and suffering, to persuade him to give Mr. Poole an interview.' Then he +talked about his own character in the City, and so forth, and entreating +me 'not to think of paying him till quite convenient; that he would keep +the bill in his desk; nobody should know of it; too happy to do me a +favour'--laid his card on the table, and went away. Tell me, should I +say anything to Mr. Darrell about this or not?" + +"Certainly not, till I have seen Mr. Poole myself. You have the money to +pay him about you? Give it to me, with Mr. Poole's address; I will call, +and settle the matter. Just ring the bell." (To the servant entering) +"Order my horse round." Then, when they were again alone, turning to +Lionel, abruptly laying one hand on leis shoulder, with the other +grasping his hand warmly, cordially: "Young man," said Alban Morley, "I +love you--I am interested in you-who would not be? I have gone through +this story; put myself positively to pain--which I hate--solely for your +good. You see what usury and money-lenders bring men to. Look me in the +face! Do you feel now that you would have the 'moral courage' you before +doubted of? Have you done with such things for ever?" + +"For ever, so help me Heaven! The lesson has been cruel, but I do thank +and bless you for it." + +"I knew you would. Mark this! never treat money affairs with levity-- +MONEY is CHARACTER! Stop. I have bared a father's fault to a son. It +was necessary--or even in his grave those faults might have revived in +you. Now, I add this, if Charles Haughton--like you, handsome, high- +spirited, favoured by men, spoiled by women--if Charles Haughton, on +entering life, could have seen, in the mirror I have held up to you, the +consequences of pledging the morrow to pay for to-day, Charles Haughton +would have been shocked as you are, cured as you will be. Humbled by +your own first error, be lenient to all his. Take up his life where I +first knew it: when his heart was loyal, his lips truthful. Raze out the +interval; imagine that he gave birth to you in order to replace the +leaves of existence we thus blot out and tear away. In every error +avoided say, 'Thus the father warns the son;' in every honourable action, +or hard self-sacrifice, say, 'Thus the son pays a father's debt.'" + +Lionel, clasping his hands together, raised his eyes streaming with +tears, as if uttering inly a vow to Heaven. The Colonel bowed his +soldier-crest with religious reverence, and glided from the room +noiselessly. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + BEING BUT ONE OF THE CONSIDERATE PAUSES IN A LONG JOURNEY, + CHARITABLY AFFORDED TO THE READER. + +Colonel Morley found Mr. Poole at home, just returned from his office; +he stayed with that gentleman nearly an hour, and then went straight to +Darrell. As the time appointed to meet the French acquaintance, who +depended on his hospitalities for a dinner, was now nearly arrived, +Alban's conference with his English friend was necessarily brief and +hurried, though long enough to confirm one fact in Mr. Poole's statement, +which had been unknown to the Colonel before that day, and the admission +of which inflicted on Guy Darrell a pang as sharp as ever wrenched +confession from the lips of a prisoner in the cells of the Inquisition. +On returning from Greenwich, and depositing his Frenchman in some +melancholy theatre, time enough for that resentful foreigner to witness +theft and murder committed upon an injured countryman's vaudeville, Alban +hastened again to Carlton Gardens. He found Darrell alone, pacing his +floor to and fro, in the habit he had acquired in earlier life, perhaps +when meditating some complicated law case, or wrestling with himself +against some secret sorrow. There are men of quick nerves who require a +certain action of the body for the better composure of the mind; Darrell +was one of them. + +During these restless movements, alternated by abrupt pauses, equally +inharmonious to the supreme quiet which characterised his listener's +tastes and habits, the haughty gentleman disburdened himself of at least +one of the secrets which he had hitherto guarded from his early friend. +But as that secret connects itself with the history of a Person about +whom it is well that the reader should now learn more than was known to +Darrell himself, we will assume our privilege to be ourselves the +narrator, and at the cost of such dramatic vivacity as may belong to +dialogue, but with the gain to the reader of clearer insight into those +portions of the past which the occasion permits us to reveal--we will +weave into something like method the more imperfect and desultory +communications by which Guy Darrell added to Alban Morley's distasteful +catalogue of painful subjects. The reader will allow, perhaps, that we +thus evince a desire to gratify his curiosity, when we state that of +Arabella Crane Darrell spoke but in one brief and angry sentence, and +that not by the name in which the reader as yet alone knows her; and it +is with the antecedents of Arabella Crane that our explanation will +tranquilly commence. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + GRIM ARABELLA CRANE. + +Once on a time there lived a merchant named Fossett, a widower with three +children, of whom a daughter, Arabella, was by some years the eldest. He +was much respected, deemed a warm man, and a safe--attended diligently to +his business--suffered no partner, no foreman, to dictate or intermeddle +--liked his comforts, but made no pretence to fashion. His villa was at +Clapham, not a showy but a solid edifice, with lodge, lawn, and gardens +chiefly notable for what is technically called glass--viz. a range of +glass-houses on the most improved principles, the heaviest pines, the +earliest strawberries. "I'm no judge of flowers," quoth Mr. Fossett, +meekly. "Give me a plain lawn, provided it be close-shaven. But I say +to my gardener: 'Forcing is my hobby--a cucumber with my fish all the +year round!'" Yet do not suppose Mr Fossett ostentatious--quite the +reverse. He would no more ruin himself for the sake of dazzling others, +than he would for the sake of serving them. He liked a warm house, +spacious rooms, good living, old wine, for their inherent merits: He +cared not to parade them to public envy. When he dined alone, or with +a single favoured guess, the best Lafitte, the oldest sherry!--when +extending the rites of miscellaneous hospitality to neighbours, +relations, or other slight acquaintances--for Lafitte, Julien; and for +sherry, Cape!--Thus not provoking vanity, nor courting notice, Mr. +Fossett was without an enemy, and seemed without a care. Formal were his +manners, formal his household, formal even the stout cob that bore him +from Cheapside to Clapham, from Claphain to Cheapside. That cob could +not even prick up its ears if it wished to shy--its ears were cropped, +so were its mane and its tail. + +Arabella early gave promise of beauty, and more than ordinary power of +intellect and character. Her father be stowed on her every advantage of +education. She was sent to a select boarding-school of the highest +reputation; the strictest discipline, the best masters, the longest +bills. At the age of seventeen she had become the show pupil of the +seminary. Friends wondered somewhat why the prim merchant took such +pains to lavish on his daughter the worldly accomplishments which seemed +to give him no pleasure, and of which he never spoke with pride. But +certainly, if she was so clever--first-rate musician, exquisite artist, +accomplished linguist, "it was very nice in old Fossett to bear it so +meekly, never crying her up, nor showing her off to less fortunate +parents--very nice in him--good sense--greatness of mind." + +"Arabella," said the worthy man one day, a little time after his eldest +daughter had left school for good; "Arabella," said he, "Mrs. -------," +naming the head teacher in that famous school, "pays you a very high +compliment in a letter I received from her this morning. She says it is +a pity you are not a poor man's daughter--that you are so steady and so +clever that you could make a fortune for yourself as a teacher." + +Arabella at that age could smile gaily, and gaily she smiled at the +notion conveyed in the compliment. + +"No one can guess," resumed the father, twirling his thumbs and speaking +rather through his nose; "the ups and downs in this mortal sphere of +trial, 'specially in the mercantile community. If ever, when I'm dead +and gone, adversity should come upon you, you will gratefully remember +that I have given you the best of education, and take care of your little +brother and sister, who are both--stupid!" + +These doleful words did not make much impression on Arabella, uttered as +they were in a handsome drawing-room, opening on the neat-shaven lawn it +took three gardeners to shave, with a glittering side-view of those +galleries of glass in which strawberries were ripe at Christmas, and +cucumbers never failed to fish. Time--went on. Arabella was now twenty- +three--a very fine girl, with a decided manner--much occupied by her +music, her drawing, her books, and her fancies. Fancies--for, like most +girls with very active heads and idle hearts, she had a vague yearning +for some excitement beyond the monotonous routine of a young lady's life; +and the latent force of her nature inclined her to admire whatever was +out of the beaten track--whatever was wild and daring. She had received +two or three offers from young gentlemen in the same mercantile community +as that which surrounded her father in this sphere of trial. But they +did not please her; and she believed her father when he said that they +only courted her under the idea that he would come down with something +handsome; "whereas," said the merchant, "I hope you will marry an honest +man, who will like you for yourself; and wait for your fortune till my +will is read. As King William says to his son, in the History of +England, 'I don't mean to strip till I go to bed.'" + +One night, at a ball in Clapham, Arabella saw the man who was destined to +exercise so baleful an influence over her existence. Jasper Losely had +been brought to this ball by a young fellow-clerk in the same commercial +house as himself; and then in all the bloom of that conspicuous beauty, +to which the miniature Arabella had placed before his eyes so many years +afterwards did but feeble justice, it may well be conceived that he +concentred on himself the admiring gaze of the assembly. Jasper was +younger than Arabella; but, what with the height of his stature and the +self-confidence of his air, he looked four or five and twenty. +Certainly, in so far as the distance from childhood may be estimated by +the loss of innocence, Jasper might have been any age! He was told that +old Fossett's daughter would have a very fine fortune; that she was a +strong-minded young lady, who governed her father, and would choose for +herself; and accordingly he devoted himself to Arabella the whole of the +evening. The effect produced on the mind of this ill-fated woman by her +dazzling admirer was as sudden as it proved to be lasting. There was a +strange charm in the very contrast between his rattling audacity and the +bashful formalities of the swains who had hitherto wooed her as if she +frightened them. Even his good looks fascinated her less than that vital +energy and power about the lawless brute, which to her seemed the +elements of heroic character, though but the attributes of riotous +spirits, magnificent formation, flattered vanity, and imperious egotism. +She was a bird gazing spell-bound on a gay young boa-constrictor, darting +from bough to bough, sunning its brilliant hues, and showing off all its +beauty, just before it takes the bird for its breakfast. + +When they parted that night, their intimacy had so far advanced that +arrangements had been made for its continuance. Arabella had an +instinctive foreboding that her father would be less charmed than herself +with Jasper Losely; that, if Jasper were presented to him, he would +possibly forbid her farther acquaintance with a young clerk, however +superb his outward appearance. She took the first false step. She had a +maiden aunt by the mother's side, who lived in Bloomsbury, gave and went +to small parties, to which Jasper could easily get introduced. She +arranged to pay a visit for some weeks to this aunt, who was then very +civil to her, accepting with marked kindness seasonable presents of +strawberries, pines, spring chickens, and so forth, and offering in turn, +whenever it was convenient, a spare room, and whatever amusement a round +of small parties, and the innocent flirtations incidental thereto, could +bestow. Arabella said nothing to her father about Jasper Losely, and to +her aunt's she went. Arabella saw Jasper very often; they became engaged +to each other, exchanged vows and love-tokens, locks of hair, &c. +Jasper, already much troubled by duns, became naturally ardent to insure +his felicity and Arabella's supposed fortune. Arabella at last summoned +courage, and spoke to her father. To her delighted surprise, Mr. +Fossett, after some moralising, more on the uncertainty of life in +general than her clandestine proceedings in particular, agreed to see Mr. +Jasper Losely, and asked him down to dinner. After dinner, over 'a +bottle of Lafitte, in an exceedingly plain but exceedingly weighty silver +jug, which made Jasper's mouth water (I mean the jug), Mr. Fossett, +commencing with that somewhat coarse though royal saying of William the +Conqueror, with which he had before edified his daughter, assured Jasper +that he gave his full consent to the young gentleman's nuptials with +Arabella, provided Jasper or his relations would maintain her in a plain +respectable way, and wait for her fortune till his (Fossett's) will was +read. What that fortune would be, Mr. Fossett declined even to hint. +Jasper went away very much cooled. Still the engagement remained in +force; the nuptials were tacitly deferred. Jasper and his relations +maintain a wife! Preposterous idea! It would take a clan of relations +and a Zenana of wives to maintain in that state to which he deemed +himself entitled--Jasper himself! But just as he was meditating the +possibility of a compromise with old Fossett, by which he would agree to +wait till the will was read for contingent advantages, provided Fossett, +in his turn, would agree in the mean while to afford lodging and board, +with a trifle for pocket-money, to Arabella and himself, in the Clapham +villa, which, though not partial to rural scenery, Jasper preferred, on +the whole, to a second floor in the City,--old Fossett fell ill, took to +his bed; was unable to attend to his business, some one else attended to +it; and the consequence was, that the house stopped payment, and was +discovered to have been insolvent for the last ten years. Not a +discreditable bankruptcy. There might perhaps be seven shillings in the +pound ultimately paid, and not more than forty families irretrievably +ruined. Old Fossett, safe in his bed, bore the affliction with +philosophical composure; observed to Arabella that he had always warned +her of the ups and downs in this sphere of trial; referred again with +pride to her first-rate education; commended again to her care Tom and +Biddy; and, declaring that he died in charity with all men, resigned +himself to the last slumber. + +Arabella at first sought a refuge with her maiden aunt. But that lady, +though not hit in pocket by her brother-in-law's failure, was more +vehement against his memory than his most injured creditor--not only that +she deemed herself unjustly defrauded of the pines, strawberries, and +spring chickens, by which she had been enabled to give small parties at +small cost, though with ample show, but that she was robbed of the +consequence she had hitherto derived from the supposed expectations of +her niece. In short, her welcome was so hostile, and her condolences so +cutting, that Arabella quitted her door with a solemn determination never +again to enter it. + +And now the nobler qualities of the bankrupt's daughter rose at once into +play. Left penniless, she resolved by her own exertions to support and +to rear her young brother and sister. The great school to which she had +been the ornament willingly received her as a teacher, until some more +advantageous place in a private family, and with a salary worthy of her +talents and accomplishments, could be found. + +Her intercourse with Jasper became necessarily suspended. She had the +generosity to write, offering to release him from his engagement. Jasper +considered himself fully released without that letter; but he deemed it +neither gallant nor discreet to say so. Arabella might obtain a +situation with larger salary than she could possibly need, the +superfluities whereof Jasper might undertake to invest. Her aunt had +evidently something to leave, though she might have nothing to give. In +fine, Arabella, if not rich enough for a wife, might be often rich enough +for a friend at need; and so long as he was engaged to her for life, it +must be not more her pleasure than her duty to assist him to live. +Besides, independently of these prudential though not ardent motives for +declaring unalterable fidelity to troth, Jasper at that time really did +entertain what he called love for the handsome young woman--flattered +that one of attainments so superior to all the girls he had ever known +should be so proud even less of his affection for her than her own +affection for himself. Thus the engagement lasted--interviews none-- +letters frequent. Arabella worked hard, looking to the future; Jasper +worked as little as possible, and was very much bored by the present. + +Unhappily, as it turned out, so great a sympathy, not only amongst the +teachers, but amongst her old schoolfellows, was felt for Arabella's +reverse; her character for steadiness, as well as talent, stood so high, +and there was something so creditable in her resolution to maintain her +orphan brother and sister, that an effort was made to procure her a +livelihood much more lucrative, and more independent, than she could +obtain either in a school or a family. Why not take a small house of her +own, live there with her fellow-orphans, and give lessons out by the +hour? Several families at once agreed so to engage her, and an income +adequate to all her wants was assured. Arabella adopted this plan. She +took the house; Bridget Greggs, the nurse of her infancy, became her +servant, and soon to that house, stealthily in the shades of evening, +glided Jasper Losely. She could not struggle against his influence--had +not the heart to refuse his visits--he was so poor--in such scrapes--and +professed himself to be so unhappy. There now became some one else to +toil for, besides the little brother and sister. But what were +Arabella's gains to a man who already gambled? New afflictions smote +her. A contagious fever broke out in the neighborhood; her little +brother caught it; her little sister sickened the next day; in less than +a week two small coffins were borne from her door by the Black Horses-- +borne to that plot of sunny turf in the pretty suburban cemetery, bought +with the last earnings made for the little ones by the mother-like +sister:--Motherless lone survivor! what! no friend on earth, no soother +but that direful Jasper! Alas! the truly dangerous Venus is not that +Erycina round whom circle Jest and Laughter. Sorrow, and that sense of +solitude which makes us welcome a footstep as a child left in the +haunting dark welcomes the entrance of light, weaken the outworks of +female virtue more than all the vain levities of mirth, or the flatteries +which follow the path of Beauty through the crowd. Alas, and alas! let +the tale hurry on! + +Jasper Losely has still more solemnly sworn to marry his adored Arabella. +But when? When they are rich enough. She feels as if her spirit was +gone--as if she could work no more. She was no weak commonplace girl, +whom love can console for shame. She had been rigidly brought up; her +sense of female rectitude was keen; her remorse was noiseless, but it was +stern. Harassments of a more vulgar nature beset her: she had +forestalled her sources of income; she had contracted debts for Jasper's +sake;--in vain: her purse was emptied, yet his no fuller. His creditors +pressed him; he told her that he must hide. One winter's day he thus +departed; she saw him no more for a year. She heard, a few days after he +left her, of his father's crime and committal. Jasper was sent abroad by +his maternal uncle, at his father's prayer; sent to a commercial house +in France, in which the uncle obtained him a situation. In fact, the +young man had been despatched to France under another name, in order to +save him from the obloquy which his father had brought upon his own. + +Soon came William Losely's trial and sentence. Arabella felt the +disgrace acutely--felt how it would affect the audacious insolent Jasper; +did not wonder that he forbore to write to her. She conceived him bowed +by shame, but she was buoyed up by her conviction that they should meet +again. For good or for ill, she held herself bound to him for life. But +meanwhile the debts she had incurred on his account came upon her. She +was forced to dispose of her house; and at this time Mrs. Lyndsay, +looking out for some first-rate superior governess for Matilda Darrell, +was urged by all means to try and secure for that post Arabella Fossett. +The highest testimonials from the school at which she had been reared, +from the most eminent professional masters, from the families at which +she had recently taught, being all brought to bear upon Mr. Darrell, he +authorised Mrs. Lyndsay to propose such a salary as could not fail to +secure a teacher of such rare qualifications. And thus Arabella became +governess to Miss Darrell. + +There is a kind of young lady of whom her nearest relations will say, "I +can't make that girl out." Matilda Darrell was that kind of young lady. +She talked very little; she moved very noiselessly; she seemed to regard +herself as a secret which she had solemnly sworn not to let out. She had +been steeped in slyness from her early infancy by a sly mother. Mrs. +Darrell was a woman who had always something to conceal. There was +always some note to be thrust out of sight; some visit not to be spoken +of; something or other which Matilda was not on any account to mention to +Papa. + +When Mrs. Darrell died, Matilda was still a child, but she still +continued to view her father as a person against whom prudence demanded +her to be constantly on her guard. It was not that she was exactly +afraid of him--he was very gentle to her, as he was to all children; but +his loyal nature was antipathetic to hers. She had no sympathy with him. +How confide her thoughts to him? She had an instinctive knowledge that +those thoughts were not such as could harmonise with his. Yet, though +taciturn, uncaressing, undemonstrative, she appeared mild and docile. +Her reserve was ascribed to constitutional timidity. Timid to a degree +she usually seemed; yet, when you thought you had solved the enigma, she +said or did something so coolly determined, that you were forced again to +exclaim, "I can't make that girl out!" She was not quick at her lessons. +You had settled in your mind that she was dull, when, by a chance remark, +you were startled to find that she was very sharp; keenly observant, when +you had fancied her fast asleep. She had seemed, since her mother's +death, more fond of Mrs. Lyndsay and Caroline than of any other human +beings--always appeared sullen or out of spirits when they were absent; +yet she confided to them no more than she did to her father. You would +suppose from this description that Matilda could inspire no liking in +those with whom she lived. Not so; her very secretiveness had a sort of +attraction--a puzzle always creates some interest. Then her face, though +neither handsome nor pretty, had in it a treacherous softness--a subdued, +depressed expression. A kind observer could not but say with an +indulgent pity; "There must be a good deal of heart in that girl, if one +could but--make her out." + +She appeared to take at once to Arabella, more than she had taken to Mrs. +Lyndsay, or even to Caroline, with whom she had been brought up as a +sister, but who, then joyous and quick and innocently fearless--with her +soul in her eyes and her heart on her lips--had no charm for Matilda, +because there she saw no secret to penetrate, and her she had no object +in deceiving. + +But this stranger, of accomplishments so rare, of character so decided, +with a settled gloom on her lip, a gathered care on her brow--there was +some one to study, and some one with whom she felt a sympathy; for she +detected at once that Arabella was also a secret. + +At first, Arabella, absorbed in her own reflections, gave to Matilda but +the mechanical attention which a professional teacher bestows on an +ordinary pupil. But an interest in Matilda sprung up in her breast, in +proportion as she conceived a venerating gratitude for Darrell. He was +aware of the pomp and circumstance which had surrounded her earlier +years; he respected the creditable energy with which she had devoted her +talents to the support of the young children thrown upon her care; +compassionated her bereavement of those little fellow-orphans for whom +toil had been rendered sweet; and he strove, by a kindness of forethought +and a delicacy of attention, which were the more prized in a man so +eminent and so preoccupied, to make her forget that she was a salaried +teacher--to place her saliently, and as a matter of course, in the +position of a gentlewoman, guest, and friend. Recognising in her a +certain vigour and force of intellect apart from her mere +accomplishments, he would flatter her scholastic pride, by referring to +her memory in some question of reading, or consulting her judgment on +some point of critical taste. She, in return, was touched by his +chivalrous kindness to the depth of a nature that, though already +seriously injured by its unhappy contact with a soul like Jasper's, +retained that capacity of gratitude, the loss of which is humanity's +last deprivation. Nor this alone: Arabella was startled by the intellect +and character of Darrell into that kind of homage which a woman, who has +hitherto met but her own intellectual inferiors, renders to the first +distinguished personage in whom she recognises, half with humility and +half with awe, an understanding and a culture to which her own reason is +but the flimsy glass-house, and her own knowledge but the forced exotic. + +Arabella, thus roused from her first listlessness, sought to requite +Darrell's kindness by exerting every energy to render his insipid +daughter an accomplished woman. So far as mere ornamental education +extends, the teacher was more successful than, with all her experience, +her skill, and her zeal, she had presumed to anticipate. Matilda, +without ear, or taste, or love for music, became a very fair mechanical +musician. Without one artistic predisposition, she achieved the science +of perspective--she attained even to the mixture of colours--she filled a +portfolio with drawings which no young lady need have been ashamed to see +circling round a drawing-room. She carried Matilda's thin mind to the +farthest bound it could have reached without snapping, through an elegant +range of selected histories and harmless feminine classics--through +Gallic dialogues--through Tuscan themes--through Teuton verbs--yea, +across the invaded bounds of astonished Science into the Elementary +Ologies. And all this being done, Matilda Darrell was exactly the same +creature that she was before. In all that related to character, to +inclinations, to heart, even that consummate teacher could give no +intelligible answer, when Mrs. Lyndsay in her softest accents (and no +accents ever were softer) sighed: "Poor dear Matilda! can you make her +out, Miss Fossett?" Miss Fossett could not make her out. But, after the +most attentive study, Miss Fossett had inly decided that there was +nothing to make out--that, like many other very nice girls, Matilda +Darrell was a harmless nullity, what you call "a Miss" white deal or +willow, to which Miss Fossett had done all in the way of increasing its +value as ornamental furniture, when she had veneered it over with +rosewood or satinwood, enriched its edges with ormolu, and strewed its +surface with nicknacks and albums. But Arabella firmly believed Matilda +Darrell to be a quiet, honest, good sort of "Miss," on the whole--very +fond of her, Arabella. The teacher had been several months in Darrell's +family, when Caroline Lyndsay, who had been almost domesticated with +Matilda (sharing the lessons bestowed on the latter, whether by Miss +Fossett or visiting masters), was taken away by Mrs. Lyndsay on a +visit to the old Marchioness of Montfort. Matilda, who was to come out +the next year, was thus almost exclusively with Arabella, who redoubled +all her pains to veneer the white deal, and protect with ormolu its +feeble edges--so that, when it "came out," all should admire that +thoroughly fashionable piece of furniture. It was the habit of Miss +Fossett and her pupil to take a morning walk in the quiet retreats of the +Green Park; and one morning, as they were thus strolling, nursery-maids +and children, and elderly folks who were ordered to take early exercises, +undulating round their unsuspecting way,--suddenly, right upon their path +(unlooked--for as the wolf that startled Horace in the Sabine wood, but +infinitely more deadly than that runaway animal), came Jasper Losely! +Arabella uttered a faint scream. She could not resist--had no thought of +resisting--the impulse to bound forward--lay her hand on his arm. She +was too agitated to perceive whether his predominant feeling was surprise +or rapture. A few hurried words were exchanged, while Matilda Darrell +gave one sidelong glance towards the handsome stranger, and walked +quietly by them. On his part, Jasper said that he had just returned to +London--that he had abandoned for ever all idea of a commercial life-- +that his father's misfortune (he gave that gentle appellation to the +incident of penal transportation) had severed him from all former +friends, ties, habits--that he had dropped the name of Losely for ever +--entreated Arabella not to betray it--his name now was Hammond--his +"prospects," he said, "fairer than they had ever been." Under the name +of Hammond, as an independent gentleman, he had made friends more +powerful than he could ever have made under the name of Losely as a city +clerk. He blushed to think he had ever been a city clerk. No doubt he +should get into some Government office; and then, oh then, with assured +income and a certainty to rise, he might claim the longed-for hand of the +"best of creatures." + +On Arabella's part, she hastily explained her present position. She was +governess to Miss Darrell--that was Miss Darrell. Arabella must not +leave her walking on by herself--she would write to him. Addresses were +exchanged--Jasper gave a very neat card--"Mr. Hammond, No.--, Duke +Street, St. James's." + +Arabella, with a beating heart, hastened to join her friend. At the +rapid glance she had taken of her perfidious lover, she thought him, if +possible, improved. His dress, always studied, was more to the fashion +of polished society, more simply correct--his air more decided. +Altogether he looked prosperous, and his manner had never been more +seductive, in its mixture of easy self-confidence and hypocritical +coaxing. In fact, Jasper had not been long in the French commercial +house--to which he had been sent out of the way while his father's trial +was proceeding and the shame of it fresh--before certain licenses of +conduct had resulted in his dismissal. But, meanwhile, he had made many +friends amongst young men of his own age--those loose wild viveurs who, +without doing anything the law can punish as dishonest, contrive for a +few fast years to live very showily on their wits. In that strange +social fermentation which still prevails in a country where an +aristocracy of birth, exceedingly impoverished, and exceedingly numerous +so far as the right to prefix a De to the name, or to stamp a coronet on +the card, can constitute an aristocrat--is diffused amongst an ambitious, +adventurous, restless, and not inelegant young democracy--each cemented +with the other by that fiction of law called egalite; in that yet +unsettled and struggling society in which so much of the old has been +irretrievably destroyed, and so little of the new has been solidly +constructed--there are much greater varieties, infinitely more subtle +grades and distinctions, in the region of life which lies between +respectability and disgrace, than can be found in a country like ours. +The French novels and dramas may apply less a mirror than a magnifying- +glass to the beings that move through that region. But still those +French novels and dramas do not unfaithfully represent the +classifications of which they exaggerate the types. Those strange +combinations, into one tableau, of students and grisettes; opera-dancers, +authors, viscounts, swindlers, romantic Lorettes, gamblers on the Bourse, +whose pedigree dates from the Crusades; impostors, taking titles from +villages in which their grandsires might have been saddlers--and if +detected, the detection but a matter of laugh; delicate women living like +lawless men; men making trade out of love, like dissolute women, yet with +point of honour so nice, that, doubt their truth or their courage, and-- +piff! you are in Charon's boat,--humanity in every civilised land may +present single specimens, more or less, answering to each thus described. +But where, save in France, find them all, if not precisely in the same +salons, yet so crossing each other to and fro as to constitute a social +phase, and give colour to a literature of unquestionable genius? And +where, over orgies so miscellaneously Berecynthian, an atmosphere so +elegantly Horatian? And where can coarseness so vanish into polished +expression as in that diamond-like language--all terseness and sparkle-- +which, as friendly to Wit in its airiest prose, as hostile to Passion in +its torrent of cloud-wrack of poetry, seems invented by the Grace out of +spite to the Muse? + +Into circles such as those of which the dim outline is here so +imperfectly sketched, Jasper Losely niched himself, as /le bel Anglais/. +(Pleasant representative of the English nation!) Not that those circles +are to have the sole credit of his corruption. No! Justice is justice! +Stand we up for our native land! /Le bel Anglais/ entered those circles a +much greater knave than most of those whom he found there. But there, at +least, he learned to set a yet higher value on his youth, and strength, +and comeliness--on his readiness of resource--on the reckless audacity +that browbeat timid and some even valiant men--on the six feet one of +faultless symmetry that captivated foolish, and some even sensible women. +Gaming was, however, his vice by predilection. A month before Arabella +met him, he had had a rare run of luck. On the strength of it he had +resolved to return to London, and (wholly oblivious of the best of +creatures till she had thus startled him) hunt out and swoop off with an +heiress. Three French friends accompanied him. Each had the same +object. Each believed that London swarmed with heiresses. They were +all three fine-looking men. One was a Count,--at least he said so. But +proud of his rank?--not a bit of it: all for liberty (no man more likely +to lose it)--all for fraternity (no man you would less love as a +brother). And as for /egalite!/--the son of a shoemaker who was /homme +de lettres/, and wrote in a journal, inserted a jest on the Count's +courtship. "All men are equal before the pistol," said the Count; and +knowing that in that respect he was equal to most, having practised at +/poupees/ from the age of fourteen, he called out the son of Crispin and +shot him through the lungs. Another of Jasper's travelling friends was +an /enfant die peuple/--boasted that he was a foundling. He made verses +of lugubrious strain, and taught Jasper how to shuffle at whist. The +third, like Jasper, had been designed for trade; and, like Jasper, he had +a soul above it. In politics he was a Communist--in talk Philanthropist. +He was the cleverest man of them all, and is now at the galleys. The +fate of his two compatriots--more obscure it is not my duty to discover. +In that peculiar walk of life Jasper is as much as I can possibly manage. + +It need not be said that Jasper carefully abstained from reminding his +old city friends of his existence. It was his object and his hope to +drop all identity with that son of a convict who had been sent out of the +way to escape humiliation. In this resolve he was the more confirmed +because he had no old city friends out of whom anything could be well +got. His poor uncle, who alone of his relations in England had been +privy to his change of name, was dead; his end hastened by grief for +William Losely's disgrace, and the bad reports he had received from +France of the conduct of William Losely's son. That uncle had left, in +circumstances too straitened to admit the waste of a shilling, a widow of +very rigid opinions; who, if ever by some miraculous turn in the wheel of +fortune she could have become rich enough to slay a fatted calf, would +never have given the shin-bone of it to a prodigal like Jasper, even had +he been her own penitent son, instead of a graceless step-nephew. +Therefore, as all civilisation proceeds westward, Jasper turned his face +from the east; and had no more idea of recrossing Temple Bar in search of +fortune, friends, or kindred, than a modern Welshman would dream of a +pilgrimage to Asian shores to re-embrace those distant relatives whom Hu +Gadarn left behind him countless centuries ago, when that mythical chief +conducted his faithfid Cymrians over the Hazy Sea to this happy island of +Honey. + + [Mel Ynnys--Isle of Honey. One of the poetic names given to England + in the language of the ancient Britons.] + +Two days after his rencontre with Arabella in the Green Park, the /soi- +disant/ Hammond having, in the interim, learned that Darrell was +immensely rich, and that Matilda was his only surviving child, did not +fail to find himself in the Green Park again--and again--and again! + +Arabella, of course, felt how wrong it was to allow him to accost her, +and walk by one side of her while Miss Darrell was on the other. But she +felt, also, as if it would be much more wrong to slip out and meet him +alone. Not for worlds would she again have placed herself in such peril. +To refuse to meet him at all?--she had not strength enough for that! Her +joy at seeing him was so immense. And nothing could be more respectful +than Jasper's manner and conversation. Whatever of warmer and more +impassioned sentiment was exchanged between them passed in notes. Jasper +had suggested to Arabella to represent him to Matilda as some near +relation. But Arabella refused all such disguise. Her sole claim to +self-respect was in considering him solemnly engaged to her--the man she +was to marry. + +And, after the second time they thus met, she said to Matilda, who had +not questioned her by a word-by a look: "I was to be married to that +gentleman before my father died; we are to be married as soon as we have +something to live upon." + +Matilda made some commonplace but kindly rejoinder. And thus she became +raised into Arabella's confidence, so far as that confidence could be +given, without betraying Jasper's real name or one darker memory in +herself. Luxury, indeed, it was to Arabella to find, at last, some one +to whom she could speak of that betrothal in which her whole future was +invested--of that affection which was her heart's sheet-anchor--of that +home, humble it might be and far off, but to which Time rarely fails to +bring the Two, if never weary of the trust to become as One. Talking +thus, Arabella forgot the relationship of pupil and teacher; it was as +woman to woman--girl to girl--friend to friend. Matilda seemed touched +by the confidence--flattered to possess at last another's secret. +Arabella was a little chafed that she did not seem to admire Jasper as +much as Arabella thought the whole world must admire. Matilda excused +herself. "She had scarcely noticed Mr. Hammond. Yes: she had no doubt +he would be considered handsome; but she owned, though it might be bad +taste, that she preferred a pale complexion, with auburn hair;" and then +she sighed and looked away, as if she had, in the course of her secret +life, encountered some fatal pale complexion, with never-to-be-forgotten +auburn hair. Not a word was said by either Matilda or Arabella as to +concealing from Mr. Darrell these meetings with Mr. Hammond. Perhaps +Arabella could not stoop to ask that secrecy; but there was no necessity +to ask; Matilda was always too rejoiced to have something to conceal. + +Now, in these interviews, Jasper scarcely ever addressed himself to +Matilda; not twenty spoken words could have passed between them; yet, in +the very third interview, Matilda's sly fingers had closed on a sly note. +And from that day, in each interview, Arabella walking in the centre, +Jasper on one side, Matilda the other--behind Arabella's back-passed the +sly fingers and the sly notes, which Matilda received and answered. Not +more than twelve or fourteen times was even this interchange effected. +Darrell was about to move to Fawley. All such meetings would be now +suspended. Two or three mornings before that fixed for leaving London, +Matilda's room was found vacant. She was gone. Arabella was the first +to discover her flight, the first to learn its cause. Matilda had left +on her writing-table a letter for Miss Fossett. It was very short, very +quietly expressed, and it rested her justification on a note from Jasper, +which she enclosed--a note in which that gallant hero, ridiculing the +idea that he could ever have been in love with Arabella, declared that he +would destroy himself if Matilda refused to fly. She need not fear such +angelic confidence in him. No! Even + + Had he a heart for falsehood framed, + He ne'er could injure her." + +Stifling each noisier cry--but panting--gasping--literally half out of +her mind, Arabella rushed into Darrell's study. He, unsuspecting man, +calmly bending over his dull books, was startled by her apparition. Few +minutes sufficed to tell him all that it concerned him to learn. Few +brief questions, few passionate answers, brought him to the very worst. + +Who, and what, was this Mr. Hammond? Heaven of heavens! the son of +William Losely--of a transported felon! + +Arabella exulted in a reply which gave her a moment's triumph over the +rival who had filched from her such a prize. Roused from his first +misery and sense of abasement in this discovery, Darrell's wrath was +naturally poured, not on the fugitive child, but on the frontless woman, +who, buoyed up by her own rage and sense of wrong, faced him, and did not +cower. She, the faithless governess, had presented to her pupil this +convict's son in another name; she owned it--she had trepanned into the +snares of so vile a fortune-hunter an ignorant child: she might feign +amaze--act remorse--she must have been the man's accomplice. Stung, +amidst all the bewilderment of her anguish, by this charge, which, at +least, she did not deserve, Arabella tore from her bosom Jasper's recent +letters to herself--letters all devotion and passion--placed them before +Darrell, and bade him read. Nothing thought she then of name and fame-- +nothing but of her wrongs and of her woes. Compared to herself, Matilda +seemed the perfidious criminal--she the injured victim. Darrell but +glanced over the letters; they were signed "your loving husband." + +"What is this?" he exclaimed; "are you married to the man?" + +"Yes," cried Arabella, "in the eyes of Heaven!" + +To Darrell's penetration there was no mistaking the significance of those +words and that look; and his wrath redoubled. Anger in him, when once +roused, was terrible; he had small need of words to vent it. His eye +withered, his gesture appalled. Conscious but of one burning firebrand +in brain and heart--of a sense that youth, joy, and hope were for ever +gone, that the world could never be the same again--Arabella left the +house, her character lost, her talents useless, her very means of +existence stopped. Who henceforth would take her to teach? Who +henceforth place their children under her charge? + +She shrank into a gloomy lodging--she--shut herself up alone with her +despair. Strange though it may seem, her anger against Jasper was slight +as compared with the in tensity of her hate to Matilda. And stranger +still it may seem, that as her thoughts recovered from their first chaos, +she felt more embittered against the world, more crushed by a sense of +shame, and yet galled by a no less keen sense of injustice, in recalling +the scorn with which Darrell had rejected all excuse for her conduct in +the misery it had occasioned her, than she did by the consciousness of +her own lamentable errors. As in Darrell's esteem there was something +that, to those who could appreciate it, seemed invaluable, so in his +contempt to those who had cherished that esteem there was a weight of +ignominy, as if a judge had pronounced a sentence that outlaws the rest +of life. + +Arabella had not much left out of her munificent salary. What she had +hitherto laid by had passed to Jasper--defraying, perhaps, the very cost +of his flight with her treacherous rival. When her money was gone, she +pawned the poor relics of her innocent happy girlhood, which she had been +permitted to take from her father's home, and had borne with her wherever +she went, like household gods, the prize-books, the lute, the costly +work-box, the very bird-cage, all which the reader will remember to have +seen in her later life, the books never opened--the lute broken, the bird +long, long, long vanished from the cage! Never did she think she should +redeem those pledges from that Golgotha, which takes, rarely to give +back, so many hallowed tokens of the Dreamland called "Better Days,"-- +the trinkets worn at the first ball, the ring that was given with the +earliest love-vow--yea, even the very bells and coral that pleased the +infant in his dainty cradle, and the very Bible in which the lips, that +now bargain for sixpence more, read to some grey-haired father on his bed +of death! + +Soon the sums thus miserably raised were as miserably doled away. With a +sullen apathy the woman contemplated famine. She would make no effort to +live--appeal to no relations, no friends. It was a kind of vengeance she +took on others, to let herself drift on to death. She had retreated from +lodging to lodging, each obscurer, more desolate than the other. Now, +she could no longer pay rent for the humblest room; now, she was told to +go forth--whither? She knew not--cared not--took her way towards the +River, as by that instinct which, when the mind is diseased, tends +towards self-destruction, scarce less involuntarily than it turns, in +health, towards self-preservation. Just as she passed under the lamp- +light at the foot of Westminster Bridge, a man looked at her, and seized +her arm. She raised her head with a chilly, melancholy scorn, as if she +had received an insult--as if she feared that the man knew the stain upon +her name, and dreamed, in his folly, that the dread of death might cause +her to sin again. + +"Do you not know me?" said the man; "more strange that I should +recognise you! Dear, dear, and what a dress!--how you are altered! Poor +thing!" + +At the words "poor thing" Arabella burst into tears; and in those tears +the heavy cloud on her brain seemed to melt away. + +"I have been inquiring, seeking for you everywhere, Miss," resumed the +man. "Surely, you know me now! Your poor aunt's lawyer! She is no +more--died last week. She has left you all she had in the world; and a +very pretty income it is, too, for a single lady." + +Thus it was that we find Arabella installed in the dreary comforts of +Podden Place. "She exchanged," she said, "in honour to her aunt's +memory, her own name for that of Crane, which her aunt had borne--her own +mother's maiden name." She assumed, though still so young, that title of +"Mrs." which spinsters, grown venerable, moodily adopt when they desire +all mankind to know that henceforth they relinquish the vanities of +tender misses--that, become mistress of themselves, they defy and spit +upon our worthless sex, which, whatever its repentance, is warned that it +repents in vain. Most of her aunt's property was in houses, in various +districts of Bloombury. Arabella moved from one to the other of these +tenements, till she settled for good into the dullest of all. To make it +duller yet, by contrast with the past, the Golgotha for once gave up its +buried treasures--broken lute, birdless cage! + +Somewhere about two years after Matilda's death, Arabella happened to be +in the office of the agent who collected her house-rents, when a well- +dressed man entered, and, leaning over the counter, said: "There is an +advertisement in to-day's Times about a lady who offers a home, +education, and so forth, to any little motherless girl; terms moderate, +as said lady loves children for their own sake. Advertiser refers to +your office for particulars--give them!" + +The agent turned to his books; and Arabella turned towards the inquirer. +"For whose child do you want a home, Jasper Losely?" + +Jasper started. "Arabella! Best of creatures! And can you deign to +speak to such a vil---" + +"Hush--let us walk. Never mind the advertisement of a stranger. I may +find a home for a motherless child--a home that will cost you nothing." + +She drew him into the street. "But can this be the child of--of--Matilda +Darrell?"-- + +"Bella!" replied, in coaxing accents, that most execrable of lady- +killers, "can I trust you?--can you be my friend in spite of my having +been such a very sad dog? But money--what can one do without money in +this world? 'Had I a heart for falsehood framed, it would ne'er have +injured you'--if I had not been so cursedly hard up! And indeed, now, if +you would but condescend to forgive and forget, perhaps some day or other +we may be Darby and Joan--only, you see, just at this moment I am really +not worthy of such a Joan. You know, of course, that I am a widower--not +inconsolable." + +"Yes; I read of Mrs. Hammond's death in an old newspaper." + +"And you did not read of her baby's death, too--some weeks afterwards?"' + +"No; it is seldom that I see a newspaper. Is the infant dead?" + +"Hum--you shall hear." And Jasper entered into a recital, to which +Arabella listened with attentive interest. At the close she offered to +take, herself, the child for whom Jasper sought a home. She informed him +of her change of name and address. The wretch promised to call that +evening with the infant; but he sent the infant, and did not call. Nor +did he present himself again to her eyes, until, several years +afterwards, those eyes so luridly welcomed him to Podden Place. But +though he did not even condescend to write to her in the mean while, it +is probable that Arabella contrived to learn more of his habits and mode +of life at Paris than she intimated when they once more met face to face. + +And now the reader knows more than Alban Morley, or Guy Darrell, perhaps +ever will know, of the grim woman in iron-grey, + + + + +CHAPTER X. + + "Sweet are the uses of Adversity, + Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, + Bears yet a precious jewel in its head." + + MOST PERSONS WILL AGREE THAT THE TOAD IS UGLY AND VENOMOUS, BUT FEW + INDEED ARE THE PERSONS WHO CAN BOAST OF HAVING ACTUALLY DISCOVERED + THAT "PRECIOUS JEWEL IN ITS HEAD," WHICH THE POET ASSURES US IS + PLACED THERE. BUT CALAMITY MAY BE CLASSED IN TWO GREAT DIVISIONS-- + 1ST, THE AFFLICTIONS, WHICH NO PRUDENCE CAN AVERT; 2ND, THE + MISFORTUNES, WHICH MEN TAKE ALL POSSIBLE PAINS TO BRING UPON + THEMSELVES. AFFLICTIONS OF THE FIRST CLASS MAY BUT CALL FORTH OUR + VIRTUES, AND RESULT IN OUR ULTIMATE GOOD. SUCH IS THE ADVERSITY + WHICH MAY GIVE US THE JEWEL. BUT TO GET AT THE JEWEL WE MUST KILL + THE TOAD. MISFORTUNES OF THE SECOND CLASS BUT TOO OFTEN INCREASE + THE ERRORS OR THE VICES BY WHICH THEY WERE CREATED. SUCH IS THE + ADVERSITY WHICH IS ALL TOAD AND NO JEWEL. IF YOU CHOOSE TO BREED + AND FATTEN YOUR OWN TOADS, THE INCREASE OF THE VENOM ABSORBS EVERY + BIT OF THE JEWEL. + +Never did I know a man who was an habitual gambler, otherwise than +notably inaccurate in his calculations of probabilities in the ordinary +affairs of life. Is it that such a man has become so chronic a drunkard +of hope, that he sees double every chance in his favour? + +Jasper Losely had counted upon two things as matters of course. + +1st. Darrell's speedy reconciliation with his only child. 2nd. That +Darrell's only child must of necessity be Darrell's heiress. + +In both these expectations the gambler was deceived. Darrell did not +even answer the letters that Matilda addressed to him from France, to the +shores of which Jasper had borne her, and where he had hastened to make +her his wife under the assumed name of Hammond, but his true Christian +name of Jasper. + +In the disreputable marriage Matilda had made, all the worst parts of her +character seemed suddenly revealed to her father's eye, and he saw what +he had hitherto sought not to see, the true child of a worthless mother. +A mere mesalliance, if palliated by long or familiar acquaintance with +the object, however it might have galled him, his heart might have +pardoned; but here, without even a struggle of duty, without the ordinary +coyness of maiden pride, to be won with so scanty a wooing, by a man who +she knew was betrothed to another--the dissimulation, the perfidy, the +combined effrontery and meanness of the whole transaction, left no force +in Darrell's eyes to the common place excuses of experience and youth. +Darrell would not have been Darrell if he could have taken back to his +home or his heart a daughter so old in deceit, so experienced in thoughts +that dishonour. + +Darrell's silence, however, little saddened the heartless bride, and +little dismayed the sanguine bridegroom. Both thought that pardon and +plenty were but the affair of time a little more or little less. But +their funds rapidly diminished; it became necessary to recruit them. One +can't live in hotels entirely upon hope. Leaving his bride for a while +in a pleasant provincial town, not many hours distant from Paris, Jasper +returned to London, intent upon seeing Darrell himself; and, should the +father-in-law still defer articles of peace, Jasper believed that he +could have no trouble in raising a present supply upon such an El Dorado +of future expectations. Darrell at once consented to see Jasper, not at +his own house, but at his solicitor's. Smothering all opposing disgust, +the proud gentleman deemed this condescension essential to the clear and +definite understanding of those resolves upon which depended the worldly +station and prospects of the wedded pair. + +When Jasper was shown into Mr. Gotobed's office, Darrell was alone, +standing near the hearth, and by a single quiet gesture repelled that +tender rush towards his breast which Jasper had elaborately prepared; and +thus for the first time the two men saw each other, Darrell perhaps yet +more resentfully mortified while recognising those personal advantages in +the showy profligate which had rendered a daughter of his house so facile +a conquest: Jasper (who had chosen to believe that a father-in-law so +eminent must necessarily be old and broken) shocked into the most +disagreeable surprise by the sight of a man still young, under forty, +with a countenance, a port, a presence, that in any assemblage would have +attracted the general gaze from his own brilliant self, and looking +altogether as unfavourable an object, whether for pathos or for post- +obits, as unlikely to breathe out a blessing or to give up the ghost, as +the worst brute of a father-in-law could possibly be. Nor were Darrell's +words more comforting than his aspect. + +"Sir, I have consented to see you, partly that you may learn from my own +lips once for all that I admit no man's right to enter my family without +my consent, and that consent you will never receive; and partly that, +thus knowing each other by sight, each may know the man it becomes him +most to avoid. The lady who is now your wife is entitled by my marriage- +settlement to the reversion of a small fortune at my death; nothing more +from me is she likely to inherit. As I have no desire that she to whom I +once gave the name of daughter should be dependent wholly on yourself for +bread, my solicitor will inform you on what conditions I am willing, +during my life, to pay the interest of the sum which will pass to your +wife at my death. Sir, I return to your hands the letters that lady has +addressed to me, and which, it is easy to perceive, were written at your +dictation. No letter from her will I answer. Across my threshold her +foot will never pass. Thus, sir, concludes all possible intercourse +between you and myself; what rests is between you and that gentleman." + +Darrell had opened a side-door in speaking the last words--pointed +towards the respectable form of Mr. Gotobed standing tall beside his tall +desk--and, before Jasper could put in a word, the father-in-law was gone. + +With becoming brevity, Mr. Gotobed made Jasper fully aware that not only +all, Mr. Darrell's funded or personal property was entirely at his own +disposal--that not only the large landed estates he had purchased (and +which Jasper had vaguely deemed inherited and in strict entail) were in +the same condition--condition enviable to the proprietor, odious to the +bridegroom of the proprietor's sole daughter; but that even the fee- +simple of the poor Fawley Manor House and lands were vested in Darrell, +encumbered only by the portion of L10,000 which the late Mrs. Darrell had +brought to her husband, and which was settled, at the death of herself +and Darrell, on the children of the marriage. + +In the absence of marriage-settlements between Jasper and Matilda, that +sum at Darrell's death was liable to be claimed by Jasper, in right of +his wife, so as to leave no certainty that provision would remain for the +support of his wife and family; and the contingent reversion might, in +the mean time, be so dealt with as to bring eventual poverty on them all. + +"Sir," said the lawyer, "I will be quite frank with you. It is my wish, +acting for Mr. Darrell, so to settle this sum of L10,000 on your wife, +and any children she may bear you, as to place it out of your power to +anticipate or dispose of it, even with Mrs. Hammond's consent. If you +part with that power, not at present a valuable one, you are entitled to +compensation. I am prepared to make that compensation liberal. Perhaps +you would prefer communicating with me through your own solicitor. But I +should tell you, that the terms are more likely to be advantageous to you +in proportion as negotiation is confined to us two. It might, for +instance, be expedient to tell your solicitor that your true name (I beg +you a thousand pardons) is not Hammond. That is a secret which, the more +you can keep it to yourself, the better I think it will be for you. We +have no wish to blab it out." + +Jasper, by this time, had somewhat recovered the first shock of +displeasure and disappointment; and with that quickness which so +erratically darted through a mind that contrived to be dull when anything +honest was addressed to its apprehension, he instantly divined that his +real name of Losely was worth something. He had no idea of reusing--was, +indeed, at that time anxious altogether to ignore and eschew it; but he +had a right to it, and a man's rights are not to be resigned for nothing. +Accordingly, he said with some asperity: "I shall resume my family name +whenever I choose it. If Mr. Darrell does not like his daughter to be +called Mrs. Jasper Losely--or all the malignant tittle-tattle which my +poor father's unfortunate trial might provoke--he must, at least, ask me +as a favour to retain the name I have temporarily adopted--a name in my +family, sir. A Losely married a Hammond, I forget when--generations ago +--you'll see it in the Baronetage. My grandfather, Sir Julian, was not a +crack lawyer, but he was a baronet of as good birth as any in the +country; and my father, sir"--(Jasper's voice trembled) "my father," he +repeated, fiercely striking his clenched hand on the table, "was a +gentleman every inch of his body; and I'll pitch any man out of the +window who says a word to the contrary!" + +"Sir," said Mr. Gotobed, shrinking towards the bell pull, "I think, on +the whole, I had better see your solicitor." + +Jasper cooled down at that suggestion; and, with a slight apology for +natural excitement, begged to know what Mr. Gotobed wished to propose. +To make an end of this part of the story, after two or three interviews, +in which the two negotiators learned to understand each other, a +settlement was legally completed, by which the sum of L10,000 was +inalienably settled on Matilda, and her children by her marriage with +Jasper; in case he survived her, the interest was to be his for life-- +in case she died childless, the capital would devolve to himself at +Darrell's decease. Meanwhile, Darrell agreed to pay L500 a year, as the +interest of the L10,000 at five per cent., to Jasper Hammond, or his +order, provided always that Jasper and his wife continued to reside +together, and fixed that residence abroad. + +By a private verbal arrangement, not even committed to writing, to this +sum was added another L200 a year, wholly at Darrell's option and +discretion. It being clearly comprehended that these words meant so long +as Mr. Hammond kept his own secret, and so long, too, as he forbore, +directly or indirectly, to molest, or even to address, the person at +whose pleasure it was held. On the whole, the conditions to Jasper were +sufficiently favourable: he came into an income immeasurably beyond his +right to believe that he should ever enjoy; and sufficient--well managed +--for even a fair share of the elegancies as well as comforts of life, to +a young couple blest in each other's love, and remote from the horrible +taxes and emulous gentilities of this opulent England, where out of fear +to be thought too poor nobody is ever too rich. + +Matilda wrote no more to Darrell. But some months afterwards he received +an extremely well-expressed note in French, the writer whereof +represented herself as a French lady, who had very lately seen Madame +Hammondwho was now in London, but for a few days, and had something to +communicate, of such importance as to justify the liberty she took in +requesting him to honour her with a visit. After some little hesitation, +Darrell called on this lady. Though Matilda had forfeited his affection, +he could not contemplate her probable fate without painful anxiety. +Perhaps Jasper had ill-used her--perhaps she had need of shelter +elsewhere. Though that shelter could not again be under a father's roof +--and though Darrell would have taken no steps to separate her from the +husband she had chosen, still, in secret, he would have felt comparative +relief and ease had she herself sought to divide her fate from one whose +path downwards in dishonour his penetration instinctively divined. With +an idea that some communication might be made to him, to which he might +reply that Matilda, if compelled to quit her husband, should never want +the home and subsistence of a gentlewoman, he repaired to the house (a +handsome house in a quiet street) temporarily occupied by the French +lady. A tall chasseur, in full costume, opened the door--a page ushered +him into the drawing-room. He saw a lady--young-and with all the grace +of a Parisieune in her manner--who, after some exquisitely-turned phrases +of excuse, showed him (as a testimonial of the intimacy between herself +and Madame Hammond) a letter she had received from Matilda, in a very +heart-broken, filial strain, full of professions of penitence--of a +passionate desire for her father's forgivenessbut far from complaining of +Jasper, or hinting at the idea of deserting a spouse with whom, but for +the haunting remembrance of a beloved parent, her lot would be blest +indeed. Whatever of pathos was deficient in the letter, the French lady +supplied by such apparent fine feeling, and by so many touching little +traits of Matilda's remorse, that Darrell's heart was softened in spite +of his reason. He went away, however, saying very little, and intending +to call no more. But another note came. The French lady had received a +letter from a mutual friend--"Matilda," she feared, "was dangerously +ill." This took him again to the house, and the poor French lady seemed +so agitated by the news she had heard--and yet so desirous not to +exaggerate nor alarm him needlessly, that Darrell suspected his daughter +was really dying, and became nervously anxious himself for the next +report. Thus, about three or four visits in all necessarily followed the +first one. Then Darrell abruptly closed the intercourse, and could not +be induced to call again. Not that he for an instant suspected that this +amiable lady, who spoke so becomingly, and whose manners were so high- +bred, was other than the well-born Baroness she called herself, and +looked to be, but partly because, in the last interview, the charming +Parisienne had appeared a little to forget Matilda's alarming illness, +in a not forward but still coquettish desire to centre his attention more +upon herself; and the moment she did so, he took a dislike to her which +he had not before conceived; and partly because his feelings having +recovered the first effect which the vision of a penitent, pining, dying +daughter could not fail to produce, his experience of Matilda's duplicity +and falsehood made him discredit the penitence, the pining, and the +dying. The Baroness might not wilfully be deceiving him--Matilda might +be wilfully deceiving the Baroness. To the next note, therefore, +despatched to him by the feeling and elegant foreigner, he replied but +by a dry excuse--a stately hint, that family matters could never be +satisfactorily discussed except in family councils, and that if her +friend's grief or illness were really in any way occasioned by a belief +in the pain her choice of life might have inflicted on himself, it might +comfort her to know that that pain had subsided, and that his wish for +her health and happiness was not less sincere, because henceforth he +could neither watch over the one nor administer to the other. To this +note, after a day or two, the Baroness replied by a letter so beautifully +worded, I doubt whether Madame de Sevigne could have written in purer +French, or Madame de Steel with a finer felicity of phrase. Stripped of +the graces of diction, the substance was but small: "Anxiety for a friend +so beloved--so unhappy--more pitied even than before, now that the +Baroness had been enabled to see how fondly a daughter must idolise a +father in the Man whom the nation revered!--(here two lines devoted to +compliment personal)--compelled by that anxiety to quit even sooner than +she had first intended the metropolis of that noble Country," &c.--(here +four lines devoted to compliment national)--and then proceeding through +some charming sentences about patriot altars and domestic hearths, the +writer suddenly checked herself--" would intrude no more on time +sublimely dedicated to the Human Race--and concluded with the assurance +of sentiments the most /distinguees/." Little thought Darrell that this +complimentary stranger, whom he never again beheld, would exercise an +influence over that portion of his destiny which then seemed to him most +secure from evil; towards which, then, be looked for the balm to every +wound--the compensation to every loss! + +Darrell heard no more of Matilda, till, not long afterwards, her death +was announced to him. She had died from exhaustion shortly after giving +birth to a female child. The news came upon him at a moment; when, from +other causes--(the explanation of which, forming no part of his +confidence to Alban, it will be convenient to reserve)--his mind was in a +state of great affliction and disorder--when he had already buried +himself in the solitudes of Fawley--ambition resigned and the world +renounced--and the intelligence saddened and shocked him more than it +might have done some months before. If, at that moment of utter +bereavement, Matilda's child had been brought to him--given up to him to +rear--would he have rejected it? would he have forgotten that it was a +felon's grandchild? + +I dare not say. But his pride was not put to such a trial. One day he +received a packet from Mr. Gotobed, enclosing the formal certificates of +the infant's death, which had been presented to him by Jasper, who had +arrived in London for that melancholy purpose, with which he combined +a pecuniary proposition. By the death of Matilda and her only child, the +sum of L10,000 absolutely reverted to Jasper in the event of Darrell's +decease. As the interest meanwhile was continued to Jasper, that widowed +mourner suggested "that it would be a great boon to himself and no +disadvantage to Darrell if the principal were made over to him at once. +He had been brought up originally to commerce. He had abjured all +thoughts of resuming such vocation during his wife's lifetime, out of +that consideration for her family and ancient birth which motives of +delicacy imposed. Now that the connection with Mr. Darrell was +dissolved, it might be rather a relief than otherwise to that gentleman +to know that a son-in-law so displeasing to him was finally settled, not +only in a foreign land, but in a social sphere in which his very +existence would soon be ignored by all who could remind Mr. Darrell that +his daughter had once a husband. An occasion that might never occur +again now presented itself. A trading firm at Paris, opulent, but +unostentatiously quiet in its mercantile transactions, would accept him +as a partner could he bring to it the additional capital of L10,000." +Not without dignity did Jasper add, "that since his connection had been +so unhappily distasteful to Mr. Darrell, and since the very payment, each +quarter, of the interest on the sum in question must in itself keep alive +the unwelcome remembrance of that connection, he had the less scruple in +making a proposition which would enable the eminent personage who so +disdained his alliance to get rid of him altogether." Darrell closed at +once with Jasper's proposal, pleased to cut off from his life each tie +that could henceforth link it to Jasper's, nor displeased to relieve his +hereditary acres from every shilling of the marriage portion which was +imposed on it as a debt, and associated with memories of unmingled +bitterness. Accordingly, Mr. Gotobed, taking care first to ascertain +that the certificates as to the poor child's death were genuine, accepted +Jasper's final release of all claim on Mr. Darrell's estate. There +still, however, remained the L200 a year which Jasper had received during +Matilda's life, on the tacit condition of remaining Mr. Hammond, and not +personally addressing Mr. Darrell. Jasper inquired "if that annuity was +to continue?" Mr. Gotobed referred the inquiry to Darrell, observing +that the object for which this extra allowance had been made was rendered +nugatory by the death of Mrs. Hammond and her child; since Jasper +henceforth could have neither power nor pretext to molest Mr. Darrell, +and that it could signify but little what name might in future be borne +by one whose connection with the Darrell family was wholly dissolved. +Darrell impatiently replied, "That nothing having been said as to the +withdrawal of the said allowance in case Jasper became a widower, he +remained equally entitled, in point of honour, to receive that allowance, +or an adequate equivalent." + +This answer being intimated to Jasper, that gentleman observed "that it +was no more than he had expected from Mr. Darrell's sense of honour," and +apparently quite satisfied, carried himself and his L10,000 back to +Paris. Not long after, however, he wrote to Mr. Gotobed that "Mr. +Darrell having alluded to an equivalent for the L200 a year allowed to +him, evidently implying that it was as disagreeable to Mr. Darrell to see +that sum entered quarterly in his banker's books, as it had been to see +there the quarterly interest of the L10,000, so Jasper might be excused +in owning that he should prefer an equivalent. The commercial firm to +which he was about to attach himself required a somewhat larger capital +on his part than he had anticipated, &c., &c. Without presuming to +dictate any definite sum, he would observe that L1,500 or even L1000 +would be of more avail to his views and objects in life than an annuity +of L200 a year, which, being held only at will, was not susceptible of a +temporary loan." Darrell, wrapped in thoughts wholly remote from +recollections of Jasper, chafed at being thus recalled to the sense of +that person's existence wrote back to the solicitor who transmitted to +him this message, "that an annuity held on his word was not to be +calculated by Mr. Hammond's notions of its value. That the L200 a year +should therefore be placed on the same footing as the L500 a year that +had been allowed on a capital of L10,000; that accordingly it might be +held to represent a principal of L4,000, for which he enclosed a cheque, +begging Mr. Gotobed not only to make Mr. Hammond fully understand that +there ended all possible accounts or communication between them, but +never again to trouble him with any matters whatsoever in reference to +affairs that were thus finally concluded." Jasper, receiving the L4,000, +left Darrell and Gotobed in peace till the following year. He then +addressed to Gotobed an exceedingly plausible, business-like letter. +"The firm he had entered, in the silk trade, was in the most flourishing +state--an opportunity occurred to purchase a magnificent mulberry +plantation in Provence, with all requisite magnanneries, &c., which would +yield an immense increase of profit. That if, to insure him a share in +this lucrative purchase, Mr. Darrell could accommodate him for a year +with a loan of L2,000 or L3,000, he sanguinely calculated on attaining so +high a position in the commercial world as, though it could not render +the recollection of his alliance more obtrusive to Mr. Darrell, would +render it less humiliating." + +Mr. Gotobed, in obedience to the peremptory instructions he had received +from his client, did not refer this letter to Darrell, but having +occasion at that time to visit Paris on other business, he resolved +(without calling on Mr. Hammond) to institute there some private inquiry- +into that rising trader's prospects and status. He found, on arrival at +Paris, these inquiries difficult. No one in either the /beau monde/ or +in the /haut commerce/ seemed to know anything about this Mr. Jasper +Hammond. A few fashionable English /roues/ remembered to have seen, once +or twice during Matilda's life, and shortly after her decease, a very +fine-looking man shooting meteoric across some equivocal /salons/, or +lounging in the Champs Elysees, or dining at the Cafe de Paris; but of +late that meteor had vanished. Mr. Gotobed, then anxiously employing a +commissioner to gain some information of Mr. Hammond's firm at the +private residence from which Jasper addressed his letter, ascertained +that in that private residence Jasper did not reside. He paid the porter +to receive occasional letters, for which he called or sent; and the +porter, who was evidently a faithful and discreet functionary, declared +his belief that Monsieur Hammond lodged in the house in which he +transacted business, though where was the house or what was the business, +the porter observed, with well-bred implied rebuke, "Monsieur Hammond was +too reserved to communicate, he himself too incurious to inquire." At +length, Mr. Gotobed's business, which was, in fact, a commission from a +distressed father to extricate an imprudent son, a mere boy, from some +unhappy associations, having brought him into the necessity of seeing +persons who belonged neither to the /beau monde/ nor to the /haut +commerce/, he gleaned from them the information he desired. Mr. Hammond +lived in the very heart of a certain circle in Paris, which but few +Englishmen ever penetrate. In that circle Mr. Hammond had, on receiving +his late wife's dowry, become the partner in a private gambling hell; in +that hell had been engulfed all the monies he had received--a hell that +ought to have prospered with him, if he could have economised his +villanous gains. His senior partner in that firm retired into the +country with a fine fortune--no doubt the very owner of those mulberry +plantations which were now on sale! But Jasper scattered napoleons +faster than any croupier could rake them away. And Jasper's natural +talent for converting solid gold into thin air had been assisted by a +lady who, in the course of her amiable life, had assisted many richer men +than Jasper to lodgings in /St. Pelagie/, or cells in the /Maison des +Fous/. With that lady he had become acquainted during the lifetime of +his wife, and it was supposed that Matilda's discovery of this liaison +had contributed perhaps to the illness which closed in her decease; the +name of that lady was Gabrielle Desinarets. She might still be seen +daily at the Bois de Boulogne, nightly at opera-house or theatre; she had +apartments in the Chaussee d'Antin far from inaccessible to Mr. Gotobed, +if he coveted the honour of her acquaintance. But Jasper was less before +an admiring world. He was supposed now to be connected with another +gambling-house of lower grade than the last, in which he had contrived to +break his own bank and plunder his own till. It was supposed also that +he remained good friends with Mademoiselle Desmarets; but if he visited +her at her house, he was never to be seen there. In fact, his temper was +so uncertain, his courage so dauntless, his strength so prodigious, that +gentlemen who did not wish to be thrown out of the window, or hurled down +a staircase, shunned any salon or boudoir in which they had a chance +to encounter him. Mademoiselle Desmarets had thus been condemned to the +painful choice between his society and that of nobody else, or that of +anybody else with the rigid privation of his. Not being a turtle-dove, +she had chosen the latter alternative. It was believed, nevertheless, +that if Gabrielle Desmarets had known the weakness of a kind sentiment, +it was for this turbulent lady-killer; and that, with a liberality she +had never exhibited in any other instance, when she could no longer help +him to squander, she would still, at a pinch, help him to live; though, +of course, in such a reverse of the normal laws of her being, +Mademoiselle Desmarets set those bounds on her own generosity which she +would not have imposed upon his, and had said with a sigh: "I could +forgive him if he beat me and beggared my friends! but to beat my friends +and to beggar me,--that is not the kind of love which makes the world go +round!" + +Scandalised to the last nerve of his respectable system by the +information thus gleaned, Mr. Gotobed returned to London. More letters +from Jasper--becoming urgent, and at last even insolent--Mr. Gotobed +worried into a reply, wrote back shortly "that he could not even +communicate such applications to Mr. Darrell, and that he must +peremptorily decline all further intercourse, epistolary or personal, +with Mr. Hammond." + +Darrell, on returning from one of the occasional rambles on the +Continent, "remote, unfriended, melancholy," by which he broke the +monotony of his Fawley life, found a letter from Jasper, not fawning, but +abrupt, addressed to himself, complaining of Mr. Gotobed's improper tone, +requesting pecuniary assistance, and intimating that he could in return +communicate to Mr. Darrell an intelligence that would give him more joy +than all his wealth could purchase. Darrell enclosed that note to Mr. +Gotobed; Mr. Gotobed came down to Fawley to make those revelations of +Jasper's mode of life which were too delicate--or too much the reverse of +delicate--to commit to paper. Great as Darrell's disgust at the memory +of Jasper had hitherto been, it may well be 'conceived how much more +bitter became that memory now. No answer was, of course, vouchsafed to +Jasper, who, after another extremely forcible appeal for money, and +equally enigmatical boast of the pleasurable information it was in his +power to bestow, relapsed into sullen silence. + +One day, somewhat more than five years after Matilda's death, Darrell, +coming in from his musing walks, found a stranger waiting for him. This +stranger was William Losely, returned from penal exile; and while +Darrell, on hearing this announcement, stood mute with haughty wonder +that such a visitor could cross the threshold of his father's house, the +convict began what seemed to Darrell a story equally audacious and +incomprehensible--the infant Matilda had borne to Jasper, and the +certificates of whose death had been so ceremoniously produced and so +prudently attested, lived still! Sent out to nurse as soon as born, the +nurse had in her charge another babe, and this last was the child who had +died and been buried as Matilda Hammond's. The elder Losely went on to +stammer out a hope that his son was not at the time aware of the +fraudulent exchange, but had been deceived by the nurse--that it had not +been a premeditated imposture of his own to obtain his wife's fortune. + +When Darrell came to this part of his story, Alban Morley's face grew +more seriously interested. "Stop!" he said; "William Losely assured +you of his own conviction that this strange tale was true. What proofs +did he volunteer?" + +"Proofs! Death, man, do you think that at such moments I was but a +bloodless lawyer, to question and cross examine? I could but bid the +impostor leave the house which his feet polluted." + +Alban heaved a sigh, and murmured, too low for Darrell to overhear, "Poor +Willy!" then aloud: "But, my dear friend, bear with me one moment. +Suppose that, by the arts of this diabolical Jasper, the exchange really +had been effected, and a child to your ancient line lived still, would it +not be a solace, a comfort--" + +"Comfort!" cried Darrell, "comfort in the perpetuation of infamy! The +line I promised my father to restore to its rank in the land, to be +renewed in the grandchild of a felon!--in the child of the yet viler +sharper of a hell! You, gentleman and soldier, call that thought-- +'comfort!' O Alban!--out on you! Fie! fie! No!--leave such a thought +to the lips of a William Losely! He indeed, clasping his hands, faltered +forth some such word; he seemed to count on my forlorn privation of kith +and kindred--no heir to my wealth--no representative of my race--would I +deprive myself of--ay--your very words--of a solace--a comfort! He asked +me, at least, to inquire." + +"And you answered?" + +"Answered so as to quell and crush in the bud all hopes in the success of +so flagrant a falsehold--answered: 'Why inquire? Know that, even if your +tale were true, I have no heir, no representative, no descendant in the +child of Jasper--the grandchild of William-Losely. I can at least leave +my wealth to the son of Charles Haughton. True, Charles Haughton was a +spendthrift, a gamester; but he was neither a professional cheat nor a +convicted felon.'" + +"You said that--Oh, Darrell!" + +The Colonel checked himself. But for Charles Haughton, the spendthrift +and gamester, would William Losely have been the convicted felon? He +checked that thought, and hurried on: "And how did William Losely reply?" + +"He made no reply--he skulked away without a word." Darrell then +proceeded to relate the interview which Jasper had forced on him at +Fawley during Lionel's visit there--on Jasper's part an attempt to tell +the same tale as William had told--on Darrell's part, the same scornful +refusal to hear it out. "And," added Darrell, "the man, finding it thus +impossible to dupe my reason, had the inconceivable meanness to apply to +me for alms. I could not better show the disdain in which I held himself +and his story than in recognising his plea as a mendicant. I threw my +purse at his feet, and so left him. + +"But," continued Darrell, his brow growing darker and darker--" but wild +and monstrous as the story was, still the idea that it MIGHT be true--a +supposition which derived its sole strength from the character of Jasper +Losely--from the interest he had in the supposed death of a child that +alone stood between himself and the money he longed to grasp--an interest +which ceased when the money itself was gone, or rather changed into the +counter-interest of proving a life that, he thought, would re-establish a +hold on me--still, I say, an idea that the story might be true would +force itself on my fears, and if so, though my resolution never to +acknowledge the child of Jasper Losely as a representative, or even as a +daughter, of my house, would of course be immovable--yet it would become +my duty to see that her infancy was sheltered, her childhood reared, her +youth guarded, her existence amply provided for." + +"Right--your plain duty," said Alban bluntly. "Intricate sometimes are +the obligations imposed on us as gentlemen; 'noblesse oblige' is a motto +which involves puzzles for a casuist; but our duties as men are plain-- +the idea very properly haunted you--and--" + +"And I hastened to exorcise the spectre. I left England--I went to the +French town in which poor Matilda died--I could not, of course, make +formal or avowed inquiries of a nature to raise into importance the very +conspiracy (if conspiracy there were) which threatened me. But I saw the +physician who had attended both my daughter and her child--I sought those +who had seen them both when living--seen them both when dead. The doubt +on my mind was dispelled--not a pretext left for my own self-torment. +The only person needful in evidence whom I failed to see was the nurse to +whom the infant had been sent. She lived in a village some miles from +the town--I called at her house--she was out. I left word I should call +the next day--I did so--she had absconded. I might, doubtless, have +traced her, but to what end if she were merely Jasper's minion and tool? +Did not her very flight prove her guilt and her terror? Indirectly I +inquired into her antecedents and character. The inquiry opened a field +of conjecture, from which I hastened to turn my eyes. This woman had a +sister who had been in the service of Gabrielle Desmarets, and Gabrielle +Desmarets had been in the neighbourhood during my poor daughter's life- +time, and just after my daughter's death. And the nurse had had two +infants under her charge; the nurse had removed with one of them to +Paris--and Gabrielle Desmarets lived in Paris--and, O Alban, if there be +really in flesh and life a child by Jasper Losely, to be forced upon my +purse or my pity--is it his child, not by the ill-fated Matilda, but by +the vile woman for whom Matilda, even in the first year of wedlock, was +deserted? Conceive how credulity itself would shrink appalled from the +horrible snare!--I to acknowledge, adopt, proclaim as the last of the +Darrells, the adulterous offspring of a Jasper Losely and a Gabrielle +Desmarets!--or, when I am in my grave, some claim advanced upon the sum +settled by my marriage articles on Matilda's issue, and which, if a child +survived, could not have been legally transferred to its father--a claim +with witnesses suborned--a claim that might be fraudulently established +--a claim that would leave the representative--not indeed of my lands and +wealth, but, more precious far, of my lineage and blood--in--in the +person of--of--" + +Darrell paused, almost stifling, and became so pale that Alban started +from his seat in alarm. + +"It is nothing," resumed Darrell, faintly, "and, ill or well, I must +finish this subject now, so that we need not reopen it." + +"I remained abroad, as you know, for some years. During that time two or +three letters from Jasper Losely were forwarded to me; the latest in date +more insolent than all preceding ones. It contained demands as if they +were rights, and insinuated threats of public exposure, reflecting on +myself and my pride: 'He was my son-in-law after all, and if he came to +disgrace, the world should know the tie.' Enough. This is all I knew +until the man who now, it seems, thrusts himself forward as Jasper +Losely's friend or agent, spoke to me the other night at Mrs. Haughton's. +That man you have seen, and you say that he--" + +"Represents Jasper's poverty as extreme; his temper unscrupulous and +desperate; that he is capable of any amount of scandal or violence. It +seems that though at Paris he has (Poole believes) still preserved the +name of Hammond, yet that in England he has resumed that of Losely; and +seems by Poole's date of the time at which he, Poole, made Jasper's +acquaintance, to have done so after his baffled attempt on you at Fawley- +whether in so doing he intimated the commencement of hostilities, or +whether, as is more likely, the sharper finds it convenient to have one +name in one country, and one in another, 'tis useless to inquire; enough +that the identity between the Hammond who married poor Matilda, and the +Jasper Losely whose father was transported, that unscrupulous rogue has +no longer any care to conceal. It is true that the revelation of this +identity would now be of slight moment to a man of the world-as thick- +skinned as myself, for instance; but to you it would be disagreeable- +there is no denying that--and therefore, in short, when Mr. Poole advises +a compromise, by which Jasper could be secured from want and yourself +from annoyance, I am of the same opinion as Mr. Poole is." + +"You are?" + +"Certainly. My dear Darrell, if in your secret heart there was something +so galling in the thought that the man who had married your daughter, +though without your consent, was not merely the commonplace adventurer +whom the world supposed, but the son of that poor dear--I mean that +rascal who was transported, Jasper, too, himself a cheat and a sharper-if +this galled you so, that you have concealed the true facts from myself, +your oldest friend, till this day--if it has cost you even now so sharp a +pang to divulge the true name of that Mr. Hammond, whom our society never +saw, whom even gossip has forgotten in connection with yourself--how +intolerable would be your suffering to have this man watching for you in +the streets, some wretched girl in his hand, and crying out, 'A penny for +your son-in-law and your grandchild!' Pardon me--I must be blunt. You +can give him to the police--send him to the treadmill. Does that mend +the matter? Or, worse still, suppose the man commits some crime that +fills all the newspapers with his life and adventures, including of +course his runaway marriage with the famous Guy Darrell's heiress--no one +would blame you, no one respect you less; but do not tell me that you +would not be glad to save your daughter's name from being coupled with +such a miscreant's at the price of half your fortune." + +"Alban'" said Darrell, gloomily, "you can say nothing on this score that +has not been considered by myself. But the man has so placed the matter, +that honour itself forbids me to bargain with him for the price of my +name. So long as he threatens, I cannot buy off a threat; so long as he +persists in a story by which he would establish a claim on me on behalf +of a child whom I have every motive as well as every reason to disown as +inheriting my blood--whatever I bestowed on himself would seem like hush- +money to suppress that claim." + +"Of course--I understand, and entirely agree with you. But if the man +retract all threats, confess his imposture in respect to this pretended +offspring, and consent to retire for life to a distant colony, upon an +annuity that may suffice for his wants, but leave no surplus beyond, to +render more glaring his vices, or more effective his powers of evil; if +this could be arranged between Mr. Poole and myself, I think that your +peace might be permanently secured without the slightest sacrifice of +honour. Will you leave the matter in my hands on this assurance--that I +will not give this person a farthing except on the conditions I have +premised?" + +"On these conditions, yes, and most gratefully," said Darrell. "Do what +you will; but one favour more: never again speak to me (unless absolutely +compelled) in reference to this dark portion of my inner life." + +Alban pressed his friend's hand, and both were silent for some moments. +Then said the Colonel, with an attempt at cheerfulness: "Darrell, more +than ever now do I see that the new house at Fawley, so long suspended, +must be finished. Marry again you must!--you can never banish old +remembrances unless you can supplant them by fresh hopes." + +"I feel it--I know it," cried Darrell, passionately. And oh! if one +remembrance could be wrenched away! But it shall--it shall!" + +"Ah!" thought Alban--" the remembrance of his former conjugal life!--a +remembrance which might well make the youngest and the boldest Benedict +shrink from the hazard of a similar experiment." + +In proportion to the delicacy, the earnestness, the depth of a man's +nature, will there be a something in his character which no male friend +can conceive, and a something in the secrets of his life which no male +friend can ever conjecture. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + + OUR OLD FRIEND THE POCKET-CANNIBAL EVINCES UNEXPECTED PATRIOTISM AND + PHILOSOPHICAL MODERATION, CONTENTED WITH A STEAK OFF HIS OWN + SUCCULENT FRIEND IN THE AIRS OF HIS OWN NATIVE SKY. + +Colonel Morley had a second interview with Mr. Poole. It needed not +Alban's knowledge of the world to discover that Poole was no partial +friend to Jasper Losely; that, for some reason or other, Poole was no +less anxious than the Colonel to get that formidable client, whose cause +he so warmly advocated, pensioned and packed off into the region most +remote from Great Britain in which a spirit hitherto so restless might +consent to settle. And although Mr. Poole had evidently taken offence at +Mr. Darrell's discourteous rebuff of his amiable intentions, yet no +grudge against Darrell furnished a motive for conduct equal to his +Christian desire that Darrell's peace should be purchased by Losely's +perpetual exile. Accordingly, Colonel Morley took leave, with a well- +placed confidence in Poole's determination to do all in his power to +induce Jasper to listen to reason. The Colonel had hoped to learn +something from Poole of the elder Losely's present residence and +resources. Poole, as we know, could give him there no information. The +Colonel also failed to ascertain any particulars relative to that female +pretender on whose behalf Jasper founded his principal claim to Darrell's +aid. And so great was Poole's embarrassment in reply to all questions on +that score--Where was the young person? With whom had she lived? What +was she like? Could the Colonel see her, and hear her own tale?--that +Alban entertained a strong suspicion that no such girl was in existence; +that she was a pure fiction and myth; or that, if Jasper were compelled +to produce some petticoated fair, she would be an artful baggage hired +for the occasion. + +Poole waited Jasper's next visit with impatience and sanguine delight. +He had not a doubt that the ruffian would cheerfully consent to allow +that, on further inquiry, he found he had been deceived in his belief of +Sophy's parentage, and that there was nothing in England so peculiarly +sacred to his heart, but what he might consent to breathe the freer air +of Columbian skies, or even to share the shepherd's harmless life amidst +the pastures of auriferous Australia! But, to Poole's ineffable +consternation, Jasper declared sullenly that he would not consent to +expatriate himself merely for the sake of living. + +"I am not so young as I was," said the bravo; "I don't speak of years, +but feeling. I have not the same energy; once I had high spirits--they +are broken; once I had hope--I have none: I am not up to exertion; I have +got into lazy habits. To go into new scenes, form new plans, live in a +horrid raw new world, everybody round me bustling and pushing--No! that +may suit your thin dapper light Hop-o'-my-thumbs! Look at me! See how I +have increased in weight the last five years--all solid bone and muscle. +I defy any four draymen to move me an inch if I am not in the mind to it; +and to be blown off to the antipodes as if I were the down of a pestilent +thistle, I am not in the mind for that, Dolly Poole!" + +"Hum!" said Poole, trying to smile. "This is funny talk. You always +were a funny fellow. But I am quite sure, from Colonel Morley's decided +manner, that you can get nothing from Darrell if you choose to remain in +England." + +"Well, when I have nothing else left, I may go to Darrell myself, and +have that matter out with him. At present I am not up to it. Dolly, +don't bore!" And the bravo, opening a jaw strong enough for any +carnivorous animal, yawned--yawned much as a bored tiger does in the face +of a philosophical student of savage manners in the Zoological Gardens. + +"Bore!" said Poole, astounded and recoiling from that expanded jaw. +"But I should have thought no subject could bore you less than the +consideration of how you are to live?" + +"Why, Dolly, I have learned to be easily contented, and you see at +present I live upon you." + +"Yes," groaned Poole, "but that can't go on for ever; and, besides, you +promised that you would leave me in peace as soon as I had got Darrell to +provide for you." + +"So I will. Zounds, sir, do you doubt my word? So I will. But I don't +call exile 'a provision'--Basta! I understand from you that Colonel +Morley offers to restore the niggardly L200 a year Darrell formerly +allowed to me, to be paid monthly or weekly, through some agent in Van +Diemen's Land, or some such uncomfortable half-way house to Eternity, +that was not even in the Atlas when I studied geography at school. But +L200 a year is exactly my income in England, paid weekly too, by your +agreeable self, with whom it is a pleasure to talk over old times. +Therefore that proposal is out of the question. Tell Colonel Morley, +with my compliments, that if he will double the sum, and leave me to +spend it where I please, I scorn haggling, and say 'done.' And as to the +girl, since I cannot find her (which, on penalty of being threshed to a +mummy, you will take care not to let out), I would agree to leave Mr. +Darrell free to disown her. But are you such a dolt as not to see that I +put the ace of trumps on my adversary's pitiful deuce, if I depose that +my own child is not my own child, when all I get for it is what I equally +get out of you, with my ace of trumps still in my hands? Basta!--I say +again Basta! It is evidently an object to Darrell to get rid of all fear +that Sophy should ever pounce upon him tooth and claw: if he be so +convinced that she is not his daughter's child, why make a point of my +saying that I told him a fib, when I said she was? Evidently, too, he is +afraid of my power to harass and annoy him; or why make it a point that I +shall only nibble his cheese in a trap at the world's end, stared at by +bushmen, and wombats, and rattlesnakes, and alligators, and other +American citizens or British settlers! L200 a year, and my wife's father +a millionaire! The offer is an insult. Ponder this: put on the screw; +make them come to terms which I can do them the honour to accept; +meanwhile, I will trouble you for my four sovereigns." + +Poole had the chagrin to report to the Colonel, Jasper's refusal of the +terms proposed, and to state the counter-proposition he was commissioned +to make. Alban was at first surprised, not conjecturing the means of +supply, in his native land, which Jasper had secured in the coffers of +Poole himself. On sounding the unhappy negotiator as to Jasper's +reasons, he surmised, however, one part of the truth--viz., that Jasper +built hopes of better terms precisely on the fact that terms had been +offered to him at all; and this induced Alban almost to regret that he +had made any such overtures, and to believe that Darrell's repugnance to +open the door of conciliation a single inch to so sturdy a mendicant was +more worldly-wise than Alban had originally supposed. Yet partly, even +for Darrell's own security and peace, from that persuasion of his own +powers of management which a consummate man of the world is apt to +entertain, and partly from a strong curiosity to see the audacious soil +of that poor dear rascal Willy, and examine himself into the facts he +asserted, and the objects he aimed at, Alban bade Poole inform Jasper +that Colonel Morley would be quite willing to convince him, in a personal +interview, of the impossibility of acceding to the propositions Jasper +had made; and that he should be still more willing to see the young +person whom Jasper asserted to be the child of his marriage. + +Jasper, after a moment's moody deliberation, declined to meet Colonel +Morley, actuated to some extent in that refusal by the sensitive vanity +which once had given him delight, and now only gave him pain. Meet thus +--altered, fallen, imbruted--the fine gentleman whose calm eye had +quelled him in the widow's drawing-room in his day of comparative +splendour--that in itself was distasteful to the degenerated bravo. But +he felt as if he should be at more disadvantage in point of argument with +a cool and wary representative of Darrell's interests, than he should +be even with Darrell himself. And unable to produce the child whom he +arrogated the right to obtrude, he should be but exposed to a fire of +cross-questions without a shot in his own locker. Accordingly he +declined, point-blank, to see Colonel Morley; and declared that the terms +he himself had proposed were the lowest he would accept. "Tell Colonel +Morley, however, that if negotiations fail, I shall not fail, sooner or +later, to argue my view of the points in dispute with my kind father-in- +law, and in person." + +"Yes, hang it!" cried Poole, exasperated; "go and see Darrell yourself. +He is easily found." + +"Ay," answered Jasper, with the hardest look of his downcast sidelong +eye--"Ay; some day or other it may come to that. I would rather not, +if possible. I might not keep my temper. It is not merely a matter of +money between us, if we two meet. There are affronts to efface. +Banished his house like a mangy dog--treated by a jackanapes lawyer like +the dirt in the kennel! The Loselys, I suspect, would have looked down +on the Darrells fifty years ago; and what if my father was born out of +wedlock, is the blood not the same? Does the breed dwindle down for want +of a gold ring and priest? Look at me. No; not what I now am; not even +as you saw me five years ago; but as I leapt into youth! Was I born to +cast sums and nib pens as a City clerk? Aha, my poor father, you were +wrong there! Blood will out! Mad devil, indeed, is a racer in a +citizen's gig! Spavined, and wind-galled, and foundered--let the brute +go at last to the knockers; but by his eye, and his pluck, and his bone, +the brute shows the stock that he came from!" + +Dolly opened his eyes and-blinked. Never in his gaudy days had Jasper +half so openly revealed what, perhaps, had been always a sore in his +pride; and his outburst now may possibly aid the reader to a subtler +comprehension of the arrogance, and levity, and egotism, which +accompanied his insensibility to honour, and had converted his very claim +to the blood of a gentleman into an excuse for a cynic's disdain of the +very virtues for which a gentleman is most desirous of obtaining credit. +But by a very ordinary process in the human mind, as Jasper had fallen +lower and lower into the lees and dregs of fortune, his pride had more +prominently emerged from the group of the other and gaudier vices, by +which, in health and high spirits, it had been pushed aside and outshone. + +"Humph!" said Poole, after a pause. "If Darrell was as uncivil to you as +he was to me, I don't wonder that you owe him a grudge. But even if you +do lose temper in seeing him, it might rather do good than not. You can +make yourself cursedly unpleasant if you choose it; and perhaps you will +have a better chance of getting your own terms if they see you can bite +as well as bark! Set at Darrell, and worry him; it is not fair to worry +nobody but me!" + +"Dolly, don't bluster! If I could stand at his door, or stop him in the +streets, with the girl in my hand, your advice would be judicious. The +world would not care for a row between a rich man and a penniless son-in- +law. But an interesting young lady, who calls him grandfather, and falls +at his knees,--he could not send her to hard labour; and if he does not +believe in her birth, let the thing but just get into the newspapers, and +there are plenty who will: and I should be in a very different position +for treating. 'Tis just because, if I meet Darrell again, I don't wish +that again it should be all bark and no bite, that I postpone the +interview. All your own laziness--exert yourself and find the girl." + +"But I can't find the girl, and you know it. And I tell you what, Mr. +Losely, Colonel Morley, who is a very shrewd man, does not believe in the +girl's existence." + +"Does not he! I begin to doubt it myself. But, at all events, you can't +doubt of mine, and I am grateful for yours; and since you have given me +the trouble of coming here to no purpose, I may as well take the next +week's pay in advance--four sovereigns if you please, Dolly Poole." + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + + ANOTHER HALT--CHANGE OF HORSES--AND A TURN ON THE ROAD. + +Colonel Morley, on learning that Jasper declined a personal conference +with himself, and that the proposal of an interview with Jasper's alleged +daughter was equally scouted or put aside, became still more confirmed in +his belief that Jasper had not yet been blest with a daughter +sufficiently artful to produce. And pleased to think that the sharper +was thus unprovided with a means of annoyance, which, skilfully managed, +might have been seriously harassing; and convinced that when Jasper found +no farther notice taken of him, he himself 'would be compelled to +petition for the terms he now rejected, the Colonel dryly informed Poole +"that his interference was at an end; that if Mr. Losely, either through +himself, or through Mr. Poole, or any one else, presumed to address Mr. +Darrell direct, the offer previously made would be peremptorily and +irrevocably withdrawn. I myself," added the Colonel, "shall be going +abroad very shortly for the rest of the summer; and should Mr. Losely, in +the mean while, think better of a proposal which secures him from want, I +refer him to Mr. Darrell's solicitor. To that proposal, according to +your account of his destitution, he must come sooner or later; and I am +glad to see that he has in yourself so judicious an adviser"-- +a compliment which by no means consoled the miserable Poole. + +In the briefest words, Alban informed Darrell of his persuasion that +Jasper was not only without evidence to support a daughter's claim, but +that the daughter herself was still in that part of Virgil's Hades +appropriated to souls that have not yet appeared upon the upper earth; +and that Jasper himself, although holding back, as might be naturally +expected, in the hope of conditions more to his taste, had only to be +left quietly to his own meditations in order to recognise the advantages +of emigration. Another L100 a-year or so, it is true, he might bargain +for, and such a demand might be worth conceding. But, on the whole, +Alban congratulated Darrell upon the probability of hearing very little +more of the son-in-law, and no more at all of the son-in-law's daughter. + +Darrell made no comment nor reply. A grateful look, a warm pressure of +the hand, and, when the subject was changed, a clearer brow and livelier +smile, thanked the English Alban better than all words. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + + COLONEL MORLEY SHOWS THAT IT IS NOT WITHOUT REASON THAT HE ENJOYS + HIS REPUTATION OF KNOWING SOMETHING ABOUT EVERYBODY. + +"Well met," said Darrell, the day after Alban had conveyed to him the +comforting assurances which had taken one thorn from his side-dispersed +one cloud in his evening sky. "Well met," said Darrell, encountering the +Colonel a few paces from his own door. "Pray walk with me as far as the +New Road. I have promised Lionel to visit the studio of an artist friend +of his, in whom he chooses to find a Raffaele, and in whom I suppose, at +the price of truth, I shall be urbanely compelled to compliment a +dauber." + +"Do you speak of Frank Vance?" + +"The same." + +"You could not visit a worthier man, nor compliment a more promising +artist. Vance is one of the few who unite gusto and patience, fancy and +brushwork. His female heads, in especial, are exquisite, though they are +all, I confess, too much like one another. The man himself is a +thoroughly fine fellow. He has been much made of in good society, and +remains unspoiled. You will find his manner rather off-hand, the reverse +of shy; partly, perhaps, because he has in himself the racy freshness and +boldness which he gives to his colours; partly, perhaps, also, because he +has in his art the self-esteem that patricians take from their pedigree, +and shakes a duke by the hand to prevent the duke holding out to him a +finger." + +"Good," said Darrell, with his rare, manly laugh. "Being shy myself, I +like men who meet one half-way. I see that we shall be at our ease with +each other." + +"And perhaps still more 'when I tell you that he is connected with an old +Eton friend of ours, and deriving no great benefit from that connection; +you remember poor Sidney Branthwaite?" + +"To be sure. He and I were great friends at Eton somewhat in the same +position of pride and poverty. Of all the boys in the school we two had +the least pocket-money. Poor Branthwaite! I lost sight of him +afterwards. He went into the Church, got only a curacy, and died young." + +"And left a son, poorer than himself, who married Frank Vance's sister." + +"You don't say so. The Branthwaites were of good old family; what is Mr. +Vance's?" + +"Respectable enough. Vance's father was one of those clever men who have +too many strings to their bow. He, too, was a painter; but he was also a +man of letters, in a sort of a way--had a share in a journal, in which he +wrote Criticisms on the Fine Arts. A musical composer, too. + +"Rather a fine gentleman, I suspect, with a wife who was rather a fine +lady. Their house was much frequented by artists and literary men: old +Vance, in short, was hospitable--his wife extravagant. Believing that +posterity would do that justice to his pictures which his contemporaries +refused, Vance left to his family no other provision. After selling his +pictures and paying his debts, there was just enough left to bury him. +Fortunately, Sir --------, the great painter of that day, had already +conceived a liking to Frank Vance--then a mere boy--who had shown genius +from an infant, as all true artists do. Sir -------- took him into his +studio and gave him lessons. It would have been unlike Sir --------, who +was open-hearted but close-fisted, to give anything else. But the boy +contrived to support his mother and sister. That fellow, who is now as +arrogant a stickler for the dignity of art as you or my Lord Chancellor +may be for that of the bar, stooped then to deal clandestinely with fancy +shops, and imitate Watteau on fans. I have two hand-screens that he +painted for a shop in Rathbone Place. I suppose he may have got ten +shillings for them, and now any admirer of Frank's would give L100 apiece +for them." + +"That is the true soul in which genius lodges, and out of which fire +springs," cried Darrell cordially. "Give me the fire that lurks in the +flint, and answers by light the stroke of the hard steel. I'm glad +Lionel has won a friend in such a man. Sidney Branthwaite's son married +Vance's sister--after Vance had won reputation?" + +"No; while Vance was still a boy. Young Arthur Branthwaite was an +orphan. If he had any living relations, they were too poor to assist +him. He wrote poetry much praised by the critics (they deserve to be +hanged, those critics!)--scribbled, I suppose, in old Vance's journal; +saw Mary Vance a little before her father died; fell in love with her; +and on the strength of a volume of verse, in which the critics all +solemnly deposed to his surpassing riches--of imagination, rushed to the +altar, and sacrificed a wife to the Muses! Those villanous critics will +have a dark account to render in the next world! Poor Arthur +Branthwaite! For the sake of our old friend, his father, I bought a copy +of his little volume. Little as the volume was, I could not read it +through." + +What!--below contempt?" + +"On the contrary, above comprehension! All poetry praised by critics +now-a-days is as hard to understand as a hieroglyphic. I own a weakness +for Pope and common sense. I could keep up with our age as far as Byron; +after him I was thrown out. However, Arthur was declared by the critics +to be a great improvement on Byron--more 'poetical in form'--more +'aesthetically artistic'--more 'objective' or 'subjective' (I am sure I +forget which; but it was one or the other, nonsensical, and not English) +in his views of man and nature. Very possibly. All I know is--I bought +the poems, but could not read them; the critics read them, but did not +buy. All that Frank Vance could make by painting hand-screens and fans +and album-scraps, he sent, I believe, to the poor poet; but I fear it did +not suffice. Arthur, I suspect, must have been publishing another volume +on his own account. I saw a Monody on something or other, by Arthur +Branthwaite, advertised, and no doubt Frank's fans and hand-screens must +have melted into the printer's bill. But the Monody never appeared: the +poet died, his young wife too. Frank Vance remains a bachelor, and +sneers at gentility--abhors poets--is insulted if you promise posthumous +fame--gets the best price he can for his pictures--and is proud to be +thought a miser. Here we are at his door." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + + ROMANTIC LOVE PATHOLOGICALLY REGARDED BY FRANK VANCE AND ALBAN + MORLEY. + +Vance was before his easel, Lionel looking over his shoulder. Never was +Darrell more genial than he was that day to Frank Vance. The two men +took to each other at once, and talked as familiarly as if the retired +lawyer and the rising painter were old fellow-travellers along the same +road of life. Darrell was really an exquisite judge of art, and his +praise was the more gratifying because discriminating. Of course he gave +the due meed of panegyric to the female heads, by which the artist had +become so renowned. Lionel took his kinsman aside, and, with a mournful +expression of face, showed him the portrait by which, all those varying +ideals had been suggested--the portrait of Sophy as Titania. + +"And that is Lionel," said the artist, pointing to the rough outline of +Bottom. + +"Pish!" said Lionel, angrily. Then turning to Darrell: "This is the +Sophy we have failed to find, sir--is it not a lovely face?" + +"It is indeed," said Darrell. "But that nameless refinement in +expression--that arch yet tender elegance in the simple, watchful +attitude--these, Mr. Vance, must he your additions to the original." + +"No, I assure you, sir," said Lionel: "besides that elegance, that +refinement, there was a delicacy in the look and air of that child to +which Vance failed to do justice. Own it, Frank." + +"Reassure yourself, Mr. Darrell," said Vance, "of any fears which +Lionel's enthusiasm might excite. He tells me that Titania is in +America; yet, after all, I would rather he saw her again--no cure for +love at first sight like a second sight of the beloved object after a +long absence." + +DARRELL (somewhat gravely).--"A hazardous remedy--it might kill, if it +did not cure." + +COLONEL MORLEY.--"I suspect, from Vance's manner, that he has tested its +efficacy on his own person." + +LIONEL.--"NO, mon Colonel--I'll answer for Vance. He in love! Never." + +Vance coloured--gave a touch to the nose of a Roman senator in the famous +classical picture which he was then painting for a merchant at +Manchester--and made no reply. Darrell looked at the artist with a sharp +and searching glance. + +COLONEL MORLEY.--"Then all the more credit to Vance for his intuitive +perception of philosophical truth. Suppose, my dear Lionel, that we +light, one idle day, on a beautiful novel, a glowing romance--suppose +that, by chance, we are torn from the book in the middle of the interest +--we remain under the spell of the illusion--we recall the scenes--we try +to guess what should have been the sequel--we think that no romance ever +was so captivating, simply because we were not allowed to conclude it. +Well, if, some years afterwards, the romance fall again in our way, and +we open at the page where we left off, we cry, in the maturity of our +sober judgment, 'Mawkish stuff!--is this the same thing that I once +thought so beautiful?--how one's tastes do alter!'" + +DARRELL.--"Does it not depend on the age in which one began the romance?" + +LIONEL.--"Rather, let me think, sir, upon the real depth of the +interest--the true beauty of the--" + +VANCE (interrupting).--" Heroine?--Not at all, Lionel. I once fell in +love--incredible as it may seem to you--nine years ago last January. I +was too poor then to aspire to any young lady's hand--therefore I did not +tell my love, but 'let concealment,' et cetera, et cetera. She went away +with her mamma to complete her education on the Continent. I remained +'Patience on a monument.' She was always before my eyes--the slenderest, +shyest creature just eighteen. I never had an idea that she could grow +any older, less slender, or less shy. Well, four years afterwards (just +before we made our excursion into Surrey, Lionel), she returned to +England, still unmarried. I went to a party at which I knew she was to +be-saw her, and was cured." + +"Bad case of small-pox, or what?" asked the Colonel, smiling. + +VANCE--"Nay; everybody said she was extremely improved--that was the +mischief--she had improved herself out of my fancy. I had been faithful +as wax to one settled impression, and when I saw a fine, full-formed, +young Frenchified lady, quite at her ease, armed with eyeglass and +bouquet and bustle, away went my dream of the slim blushing maiden. The +Colonel is quite right, Lionel; the romance once suspended, 'tis a +haunting remembrance till thrown again in our way, but complete +disillusion if we try to renew it; though I swear that in my case the +interest was deep, and the heroine improved in her beauty. So with you +and that dear little creature. See her again, and you'll tease, me no +more to give you that portrait of Titania at watch over Bottom's soft +slumbers. All a Midsummer Night's Dream, Lionel. Titania fades back +into the arms of Oberon, and would not be Titania if you could make her- +Mrs. Bottom." + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + + EVEN COLONEL MORLEY, (KNOWING EVERYBODY AND EVERYTHING), IS PUZZLED + WHEN IT COMES TO THE PLAIN QUESTION--"WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?" + +"I am delighted with Vance," said Darrell, when he and the Colonel were +again walking arm-in-arm. "His is not one of those meagre intellects +which have nothing to spare out of the professional line. He has humour. +Humour--strength's rich superfluity." + +"I like your definition," said the Colonel. "And humour in Vance, though +fantastic, is not without subtlety. There was much real kindness in his +obvious design to quiz Lionel out of that silly enthusiasm for--" + +"For a pretty child, reared up to be a strolling player," interrupted +Darrell. "Don't call it silly enthusiasm. I call it chivalrous +compassion. Were it other than compassion, it would not be enthusiasm-- +it would be degradation. But do you believe, then, that Vance's +confession of first love, and its cure, was but a whimsical invention?" + +COLONEL MORLEY.--"Not so. Many a grave truth is spoken jestingly. I +have no doubt that, allowing for the pardonable exaggeration of a +/raconteur/, Vance was narrating an episode in his own life." + +DARRELL.--"Do you think that a grown man, who has ever really felt love, +can make a jest of it, and to mere acquaintances?" + +COLONEL MORLEY.--"Yes; if he be so thoroughly cured, that he has made a +jest of it to himself. And the more lightly he speaks of it, perhaps the +more solemnly at one time he felt it. Levity is his revenge on the +passion that fooled him." + +DARRELL.--"You are evidently an experienced philosopher in the lore of +such folly. '/Consultas insapientis sapientiae/.' Yet I can scarcely +believe that you have ever been in love." + +"Yes, I have," said the Colonel bluntly, "and very often! Everybody at +my age has--except yourself. So like a man's observation, that," +continued the Colonel with much tartness. "No man ever thinks another +man capable of a profound and romantic sentiment!" + +DARRELL.--"True; I own my shallow fault, and beg you ten thousand +pardons. So then you really believe, from your own experience, that +there is much in Vance's theory and your own very happy illustration? +Could we, after many years, turn back to the romance at the page at which +we left off, we should--" + +COLONEL MORLEY.--"Not care a straw to read on! Certainly, half the +peculiar charm of a person beloved must be ascribed to locality and +circumstance." + +DARRELL.--"I don't quite understand you." + +COLONEL MORLEY.--"Then, as you liked my former illustration, I will +explain myself by another one more homely. In a room to which you are +accustomed there is a piece of furniture, or an ornament, which so +exactly suits the place that you say: 'The prettiest thing I ever saw!' +You go away--you return--the piece of furniture or the ornament has been +moved into another room. You see it there, and you say: 'Bless me, is +that the thing I so much admired!' The strange room does not suit it- +losing its old associations and accessories, it has lost its charm. So +it is with human beings--seen in one place, the place would be nothing +without them; seen in another, the place without them would be all the +better!" + +DARRELL (musingly)--"There are some puzzles in life which resemble the +riddles a child asks you to solve. Your imagination cannot descend low +enough for the right guess. Yet, when you are told, you are obliged to +say, 'How clever!' Man lives to learn." + +"Since you have arrived at that conviction," replied Colonel Morley, +amused by his friend's gravity, "I hope that you will rest satisfied with +the experiences of Vance and myself; and that if you have a mind to +propose to one of the young ladies whose merits we have already +discussed, you will not deem it necessary to try what effect a prolonged +absence might produce on your good resolution." + +"No!" said Darrell, with sudden animation. "Before three days are over +my mind shall be made up." "Bravo!--as to whom of the three you would +ask in marriage?" + +"Or as to the idea of ever marrying again. Adieu, I am going to knock at +that door." + +"Mr. Vyvyan's! Ah, is it so, indeed? Verily, you are a true Dare-all." + +"Do not be alarmed. I go afterwards to an exhibition with Lady Adela, +and I dine with the Carr Viponts. My choice is not yet made, and my hand +still free." + +"His hand still free!" muttered the Colonel, pursuing his walk alone. +"Yes--but three days hence--O--What will he do with it?" + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + + GUY DARRELL'S DECISION. + +Guy Darrell returned home from Carr Vipont's dinner at a late hour. On +his table was a note from Lady Adela's father, cordially inviting Darrell +to pass the next week at his country-house; London was now emptying fast. +On the table too was a parcel, containing a book which Darrell had lent +to Miss Vyvyan some weeks ago, and a note from herself. In calling at +her father's house that morning, he had learned that Mr. Vyvyan had +suddenly resolved to take her into Switzerland, with the view of passing +the next winter in Italy. The room was filled with loungers of both +sexes. Darrell had stayed but a short time. The leave-taking had been +somewhat formal--Flora unusually silent. He opened her note, and read +the first lines listlessly; those that followed, with a changing cheek +and an earnest eye. He laid down the note very gently, again took it up +and reperused. Then he held it to the candle, and it dropped from his +hand in tinder. "The innocent child," murmured he, with a soft paternal +tenderness; "she knows not what she writes." He began to pace the room +with his habitual restlessness when in solitary thought--often stopping-- +often sighing heavily. At length his face cleared-his lips became firmly +set. He summoned his favourite servant. "Mills," said he, "I shall +leave town on horseback as soon as the sun rises. Put what I may require +for a day or two into the saddle-bags. Possibly, however I may be back +by dinner-time. Call me at five o'clock, and then go round to the +stables. I shall require no groom to attend me." + +The next morning, while the streets were deserted, no houses as yet +astir, but the sun bright, the air fresh, Guy Darrell rode from his door. +He did not return the same day, nor the next, nor at all. But, late in +the evening of the second day, his horse, reeking hot and evidently hard- +ridden, stopped at the porch of Fawley Manor-House; and Darrell flung +himself from the saddle, and into Fairthorn's arms. "Back again--back +again--and to leave no more!" said he, looking round; "Spes et Fortuna +valete!" + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + + A MAN'S LETTER--UNSATISFACTORY AND PROVOKING AS A MAN'S LETTERS + ALWAYS ARE. + + +GUY DARRELL To COLONEL MORLEY. + +Fawley Manor-House, August 11, 18--. I HAVE decided, my dear Alban. I +did not take three days to do so, though the third day may be just over +ere you learn my decision. I shall never marry again: I abandon that +last dream of declining years. My object in returning to the London +world was to try whether I could not find, amongst the fairest and most +attractive women that the world produces--at least to an English eye-- +some one who could inspire me with that singleness of affection which +could alone justify the hope that I might win in return a wife's esteem +and a contented home. That object is now finally relinquished, and with +it all idea of resuming the life of cities. I might have re-entered a +political career, had I first secured to myself a mind sufficiently +serene and healthful for duties that need the concentration of thought +and desire. Such a state of mind I cannot secure. I have striven for +it; I am baffled. It is said that politics are a jealous mistress--that +they require the whole man. The saying is not invariably true in the +application it commonly receives--that is, a politician may have some +other employment of intellect, which rather enlarges his powers than +distracts their political uses. Successful politicians have united with +great parliamentary toil and triumph legal occupations or learned +studies. But politics do require that the heart should be free, and at +peace from all more absorbing private anxieties--from the gnawing of a +memory or a care, which dulls ambition and paralyses energy. In this +sense politics do require the whole man. If I return to politics now, +I should fail to them, and they to me. I feel that the brief interval +between me and the grave has need of repose: I find that repose here. +I have therefore given the necessary orders to dismiss the pompous +retinue which I left behind me, and instructed my agent to sell my London +house for whatever it may fetch. I was unwilling to sell it before-- +unwilling to abandon the hope, however faint, that I might yet regain +strength for action. But the very struggle to obtain such strength +leaves me exhausted more. + +You may believe that it is not without a pang, less of pride than of +remorse, that I resign unfulfilled the object towards which all my +earlier life was so resolutely shaped. The house I promised my father to +re-found dies to dust in my grave. To my father's blood no heir to my +wealth can trace. Yet it is a consolation to think that Lionel Haughton +is one on whom my father would have smiled approvingly. At my death, +therefore, at least the old name will not die; Lionel Haughton will take +and be worthy to bear it. Strange weakness of mine, you will say; but I +cannot endure the thought that the old name should be quite blotted out +of the land. I trust that Lionel may early form a suitable and happy +marriage. Sure that he will not choose ignobly, I impose no fetters on +his choice. + +One word only on that hateful subject, confided so tardily to your +friendship, left so thankfully to your discretion. Now that I have once +more buried myself in Fawley, it is very unlikely that the man it pains +me to name will seek me here. If he does, he cannot molest me as if I +were in the London world. Continue, then, I pray you, to leave him +alone. And, in adopting your own shrewd belief, that after all there is +no such child as he pretends to claim, my mind becomes tranquillised on +all that part of my private griefs. + +Farewell, old school-friend! Here, so far as I can foretell--here, where +my life began, it returns, when Heaven pleases, to close. Here I could +not ask you to visit me: what is rest to me would be loss of time to you. +But in my late and vain attempt to re-enter that existence in which you +have calmly and wisely gathered round yourself, "all that should +accompany old age-honour, love, obedience, troops of friends"--nothing so +repaid the effort--nothing now so pleasantly remains to recollection--as +the brief renewal of that easy commune which men like me never know, save +with those whose laughter brings back to them a gale from the old +playground. "/Vive, vale/;" I will not add, "/Sis memor mei/." So many +my obligations to your kindness, that you will be forced to remember me +whenever you recall the not "painful subjects" of early friendship and +lasting gratitude. Recall only those when reminded of GUY DARRELL. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + + NO COINAGE IN CIRCULATION S0 FLUCTUATES IN VALUE AS THE WORTH OF A + MARRIAGEABLE MAN. + +Colonel Morley was not surprised (that, we know, he could not be, by any +fresh experience of human waywardness and caprice), but much disturbed +and much vexed by the unexpected nature of Darrell's communication. +Schemes for Darrell's future lead become plans of his own. Talk with his +old school-fellow had, within the last three months, entered into the +pleasures of his age. Darrell's abrupt and final renunciation of this +social world made at once a void in the business of Alban's mind, and in +the affections of Alban's heart. And no adequate reason assigned for so +sudden a flight and so morbid a resolve! Some tormenting remembrance-- +some rankling grief--distinct from those of which Alban was cognisant, +from those in which he had been consulted, was implied, but by vague and +general hints. But what was the remembrance or the grief, Alban Morley, +who knew everything, was quite persuaded that Darrell would never suffer +him to know. Could it be in any way connected with those three young +ladies to whom Darrell's attentions had been so perversely impartial? +The Colonel did not fail to observe that to those young ladies Darrell's +letter made no allusion. Was it not possible that he had really felt for +one of them a deeper sentiment than a man advanced in years ever likes to +own even to his nearest friend--hazarded a proposal, and met with a +rebuff? If so, Alban conjectured the female culprit by whom the +sentiment had been inspired, and the rebuff administered. "That +mischievous kitten, Flora Vyvyan," growled the Colonel. "I always felt +that she had the claws of a tigress under her /patte de velours/!" +Roused by this suspicion, he sallied forth to call on the Vyvyans. Mr. +Vyvyan, a widower, one of those quiet gentleman-like men who sit much in +the drawing-room and like receiving morning visitors, was at home to him. +"So Darrell has left town for the season," said the Colonel, pushing +straight to the point. + +"Yes," said Mr. Vyvyan. "I had a note from him this morning to say he +had renounced all hope of--" + +"What?" cried the Colonel. + +"Joining us in Switzerland. I am so sorry. Flora still more sorry. She +is accustomed to have her own way, and she had set her heart on hearing +Darrell read 'Manfred' in sight of the Jungfrau!" + +"Um!" said the Colonel. "What might be sport to her might be death to +him. A man at his age is not too old to fall in love with a young lady +of hers. But he is too old not to be extremely ridiculous to such a +young lady if he does." + +"Colonel Morley--Fie!" cried an angry voice behind him. Flora had +entered the room unobserved. Her face was much flushed, and her eyelids +looked as if tears had lately swelled beneath them, and were swelling +still. + +"What have I said to merit your rebuke?" asked the Colonel composedly. + +"Said! coupled the thought of ridicule with the name of Mr. Darrell!" + +"Take care, Morley," said Mr. Vyvyan, laughing. "Flora is positively +superstitious in her respect for Guy Darrell; and you cannot offend her +more than by implying that he is mortal. Nay, child, it is very natural. +Quite apart from his fame, there is something in that man's familiar +talk, or rather, perhaps, in the very sound of his voice, which makes +most other society seem flat and insipid. + +"I feel it myself. And when Flora's young admirers flutter and babble +round her--just after Darrell has quitted his chair beside her--they seem +very poor company. I am sure, Flora," continued Vyvyan kindly, "that the +mere acquaintance of such a man has done you much good; and I am now in +great hopes that, whenever you marry, it will be a man of sense." + +"Um!" again said the Colonel, eyeing Flora aslant, but with much +attention. "How I wish, for my friend's sake, that he was of an age +which inspired Miss Vyvyan with less--veneration." + +Flora turned her back on the Colonel, looking out of the window, and her +small foot beating the ground with nervous irritation. + +"It was given out that Darrell intended to marry again," said Mr. Vyvyan. +"A man of that sort requires a very superior highly-educated woman; and +if Miss Carr Vipont had been a little more of his age she would have just +suited him. But I am patriot enough to hope that he will remain single, +and have no wife but his country, like Mr. Pitt." The Colonel having now +satisfied his curiosity, and assured himself that Darrell was, there at +least, no rejected suitor, rose and approached Flora to make peace and to +take leave. As he held out his hand, he was struck with the change in a +countenance usually so gay in its aspect--it spoke of more than +dejection, it betrayed distress; when she took his hand, she retained it, +and looked into his eyes wistfully; evidently there was something on her +mind which she wished to express and did not know how. At length she +said in a whisper: "You are Mr. Darrell's most intimate friend; I have +heard him say so; shall you see him soon?" + +"I fear not; but why?" + +"Why? you, his friend; do you not perceive that he is not happy? I, a +mere stranger, saw it at the first. You should cheer and comfort him; +you have that right--it is a noble privilege." + +"My dear young lady," said the Colonel, touched, "you have a better heart +than I thought for. It is true Darrell is not a happy man; but can you +give me any message that might cheer him more than an old bachelor's +commonplace exhortations to take heart, forget the rains of yesterday, +and hope for some gleam of sun on the morrow?" + +"No," said Flora, sadly, "it would be a presumption indeed in me, to +affect the consoler's part; but"--(her lips quivered)--"but if I may +judge by his letter, I may never see him again." + +"His letter! He has written to you, then, as well as to your father?" + +"Yes," said Flora, confused and colouring, "a few lines in answer to a +silly note of mine; yes, tell him that I shall never forget his kind +counsels, his delicate, indulgent construction of--of--in short, tell him +my father is right, and that I shall be better and wiser all my life for +the few short weeks in which I have known Guy Darrell." + +"What secrets are you two whispering there?" asked Mr. Vyvyan from his +easy-chair. + +"Ask her ten years hence," said the Colonel, as he retreated to the door. +"The fairest leaves in the flower are the last that the bud will +disclose." + +From Mr. Vyvyan the Colonel went to Lord -----'s. His lordship had also +heard from Darrell that morning; Darrell declined the invitation to ---- +Hall; business at Fawley. Lady Adela had borne the disappointment with +her wonted serenity of temper, and had gone out shopping. Darrell had +certainly not offered his hand in that quarter; had he done so--whether +refused or accepted--all persons yet left in London would have heard the +news. Thence the Colonel repaired to Carr Vipont's. Lady Selina was at +home and exceedingly cross. Carr had been astonished by a letter from +Mr. Darrell, dated Fawley--left town for the season without even calling +to take leave--a most eccentric man. She feared his head was a little +touched--that he knew it, but did not like to own it--perhaps the doctors +had told him he must keep quiet, and not excite himself with politics. +"I had thought," said Lady Selina, "that he might have felt a growing +attachment for Honoria; and considering the disparity of years, and that +Honoria certainly might marry any one, he was too proud to incur the risk +of refusal. But I will tell you in confidence, as a relation and dear +friend, that Honoria has a very superior mind, and might have overlooked +the mere age: congenial tastes--you understand. But on thinking it all +over, I begin to doubt whether that be the true reason for his running +away in this wild sort of manner. My maid tells me that his house- +steward called to say that the establishment was to be broken up. That +looks as if he had resigned London for good; just, too, when, Carr says, +the CRISIS, so long put off, is sure to burst on us. I'm quite sick of +clever men--one never knows how to trust them; if they are not dishonest +they are eccentric! I have just been telling Honoria that clever men +are, after all, the most tiresome husbands. Well, what makes you so +silent? What do you say? Why don't you speak?" + +"I am slowly recovering from my shock," said the Colonel. "So Darrell +shirks the CRISIS, and has not even hinted a preference for Honoria, the +very girl in all London that would have made him a safe, rational +companion. I told him so, and he never denied it. But it is a comfort +to think he is no loss. Old monster!" + +"Nay," said Lady Selina, mollified by so much sympathy, "I don't say he +is no loss. Honestly speaking--between ourselves--I think he is a very +great loss. An alliance between him and Honoria would have united all +the Vipont influence. Lord Montfort has the greatest confidence in +Darrell; and if this CRISIS comes, it is absolutely necessary for the +Vipont interest that it should find somebody who can speak. Really, my +dear Colonel Morley, you, who have such an influence over this very odd +man, should exert it now. One must not be over-nice in times of CRISIS; +the country is at stake, Cousin Alban." + +"I will do my best," said the Colonel; "I am quite aware that an alliance +which would secure Darrell's talents to the House of Vipont, and the +House of Vipont to Darrell's talents, would--but 'tis no use talking, we +must not sacrifice Honoria even on the altar of her country's interest!" + +"Sacrifice! Nonsense! The man is not young certainly, but then what a +grand creature, and so clever." + +"Clever--yes! But that was your very objection to him five minutes ago." + +"I forgot the CRISIS.--One don't want clever men every day, but there are +days when one does want them!" + +"I envy you that aphorism. But from what you now imply, I fear that +Honoria may have allowed her thoughts to settle upon what may never take +place; and if so, she may fret." + +"Fret! a daughter of mine fret!--and of all my daughters, Honoria! A +girl of the best-disciplined mind! Fret! what a word!--vulgar!" + +COLONEL MORLEY.--"So it is; I blush for it; but let us understand each +other. If Darrell proposed for Honoria, you think, ambition apart, she +would esteem him sufficiently for a decided preference." + +LADY SELINA,--"If that be his doubt, re-assure him. He is shy-men of +genius are; Honoria would esteem him! Till he has actually proposed it +would compromise her to say more even to you." + +COLONEL MORLEY.--"And if that be not the doubt, and if I ascertain that +Darrell has no idea of proposing, Honoria would--" + +LADY SELINA.--"Despise him. Ah, I see by your countenance that you think +I should prepare her. Is it so, frankly?" + +COLONEL MORLEY.--"Frankly, then. I think Guy Darrell, like many other +men, has been so long in making up his mind to marry again that he has +lost the right moment, and will never find it." + +Lady Selina smells at her vinaigrette, and replies in her softest, +affectedest, civilest, and crushingest manner: "POOR--DEAR--OLD MAN!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + + MAN IS NOT PERMITTED, WITH ULTIMATE IMPUNITY, TO EXASPERATE THE + ENVIES AND INSULT THE MISERIES OF THOSE AROUND HIM, BY A SYSTEMATIC + PERSEVERANCE IN WILFUL-CELIBACY. IN VAIN MAY HE SCHEME, IN THE + MARRIAGE OF INJURED FRIENDS, TO PROVIDE ARM-CHAIRS, AND FOOT-STOOLS, + AND PRATTLING BABIES FOR THE LUXURIOUS DELECTATION OF HIS INDOLENT + AGE. THE AVENGING EUMENIDES (BEING THEMSELVES ANCIENT VIRGINS + NEGLECTED) SHALL HUMBLE HIS INSOLENCE, BAFFLE HIS PROJECTS, AND + CONDEMN HIS DECLINING YEARS TO THE HORRORS OF SOLITUDE,--RARELY EVEN + WAKENING HIS SOUL TO THE GRACE OF REPENTANCE. + +The Colonel, before returning home, dropped into the Clubs, and took care +to give to Darrell's sudden disappearance a plausible and commonplace +construction. The season was just over. Darrell had gone to the +country. The town establishment was broken up, because the house in +Carlton Gardens was to be sold. Darrell did not like the situation-- +found the air relaxing--Park Lane or Grosvenor Square were on higher +ground. Besides, the staircase was bad for a house of such pretensions-- +not suited to large parties. Next season Darrell might be in a position +when he would have to give large parties, &c., &c. As no one is inclined +to suppose that a man will retire from public life just when he has +a chance of office, so the Clubs took Alban Morley's remarks +unsuspiciously, and generally agreed that Darrell showed great tact in +absenting himself from town during the transition state of politics that +always precedes a CRISIS, and that it was quite clear that he calculated +on playing a great part when the CRISIS was over, by finding his house +had grown too small for him. Thus paving the way to Darrell's easy +return to the world, should he repent of his retreat (a chance which +Alban by no means dismissed from his reckoning), the Colonel returned +home to find his nephew George awaiting him there. The scholarly +clergyman had ensconced himself in the back drawing-room, fitted up as +a library, and was making free with the books. "What have you there, +George?" asked the Colonel, after shaking him by the hand. "You seemed +quite absorbed in its contents, and would not have noticed my presence +but for Gyp's bark." + +"A volume of poems I never chanced to meet before, full of true genius." + +"Bless me, poor Arthur Branthwaite's poems. And you were positively +reading those--not induced to do so by respect for his father? Could you +make head or tail of them?" + +"There is a class of poetry which displeases middle age by the very +attributes which render it charming to the young; for each generation has +a youth with idiosyncrasies peculiar to itself, and a peculiar poetry by +which those idiosyncrasies are expressed." + +Here George was beginning to grow metaphysical, and somewhat German, when +his uncle's face assumed an expression which can only be compared to that +of a man who dreads a very severe and long operation. George humanely +hastened to relieve his mind. + +"But I will not bore you at present." + +"Thank you," said the Colonel, brightening up. + +"Perhaps you will lend me the book. I am going down to Lady Montfort's +by-and-by, and I can read it by the way." + +"Yes, I will lend it to you till next season. Let me have it again then, +to put on the table when Frank Vance comes to breakfast with me. The +poet was his brother-in-law; and though, for that reason, poets and +poetry are a sore subject with Frank, yet the last time he breakfasted +here, I felt, by the shake of his hand in parting, that he felt pleased +by a mark of respect to all that is left of poor Arthur Branthwaite. So +you are going to Lady Montfort? Ask her why she chits me!" + +"My dear uncle! You know how secluded her life is at present; but she +has charged me to assure you of her unalterable regard for you; and +whenever her health and spirits are somewhat more recovered, I have no +doubt that she will ask you to give her the occasion to make that +assurance in person." + +COLONEL MORLEY.--"Can her health and spirits continue so long affected by +grief for the loss of that distant acquaintance whom the law called her +husband?" + +GEORGE.--"She is very far from well, and her spirits are certainly much +broken. And now, uncle, for the little favour I came to ask. Since you +presented me to Mr. Darrell, he kindly sent me two or three invitations +to dinner, which my frequent absence from town would not allow me to +accept. I ought to call on him; and, as I feel ashamed not to have done +so before, I wish you would accompany me to his house. One happy word +from you would save me a relapse into stutter. When I want to apologise +I always stutter." + +"Darrell has left town," said the Colonel, roughly, "you have missed an +opportunity that will never occur again. The most charming companion; an +intellect so manly, yet so sweet! I shall never find such another." And +for the first time in thirty years a tear stole to Alban Morley's eye. + +GEORGE.--"When did he leave town?" + +COLONEL MORLEY.--"Three days ago." + +GEORGE.--"Three days ago! and for the Continent again?" + +COLONEL MORLEY.--"No; for the Hermitage, George. I have such a letter +from him! You know how many years he has been absent from the world. +When, this year, he re-appeared, he and I grew more intimate than we had +ever been since we had left school; for though the same capital held us +before, he was then too occupied for much familiarity with an idle man +like me. But just when I was intertwining what is left of my life with +the bright threads of his, he snaps the web asunder: he quits this London +world again; says he will return to it no more." + +GEORGE.--"Yet I did hear that he proposed to renew his parliamentary +career; nay, that he was about to form a second marriage, with Honoria +Vipont?" + +COLONEL MORLEY.--"Mere gossip-not true. No, he will never marry again. +Three days ago I thought it certain that he would--certain that I should +find for my old age a nook in his home--the easiest chair in his social +circle; that my daily newspaper would have a fresh interest, in the +praise of his name or the report of his speech; that I should walk +proudly into White's, sure to hear there of Guy Darrell; that I should +keep from misanthropical rust my dry knowledge of life, planning shrewd +panegyrics to him of a young happy wife, needing all his indulgence-- +panegyrics to her of the high-minded sensitive man, claiming tender +respect and delicate soothing;--that thus, day by day, I should have made +more pleasant the home in which I should have planted myself, and found +in his children boys to lecture and girls to spoil. Don't be jealous, +George. I like your wife, I love your little ones, and you will inherit +all I have to leave. But to an old bachelor, who would keep young to the +last, there is no place so sunny as the hearth of an old school-friend. +But my house of cards is blown down--talk of it no more--'tis a painful +subject. You met Lionel Haughton here the last time you called--how did +you like him!" + +"Very much indeed." + +"Well, then, since you cannot call on Darrell, call on him." + +GEORGE (with animation).--"It is just what I meant to do--what is his +address?" + +COLONEL MORLEY--"There is his card--take it. He was here last night to +inquire if I knew where Darrell had gone, though no one in his household, +nor I either, suspected till this morning that Darrell had left town for +good. You will find Lionel at home, for I sent him word I would call. +But really I am not up to it now. Tell him from me that Mr. Darrell will +not return to Carlton Gardens this season, and is gone to Fawley. At +present Lionel need not know more--you understand? And now, my dear +George, good day." + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + + EACH GENERATION HAS ITS OWN CRITICAL CANONS IN POETRY AS WELL AS IN + POLITICAL CREEDS, FINANCIAL SYSTEMS, OR WHATEVER OTHRR CHANGEABLE + MATTERS OF TASTE ARE CALLED "SETTLED QUESTIONS" AND "FIXED OPINIONS." + +George, musing much over all that his uncle had said respecting Darrell, +took his way to Lionel's lodgings. The young man received him with the +cordial greeting due from Darrell's kinsman to Colonel Morley's nephew, +but tempered by the respect no less due to the distinction and the +calling of the eloquent preacher. + +Lionel was perceptibly affected by learning that Darrell had thus +suddenly returned to the gloomy beech-woods of Fawley; and he evinced his +anxious interest in his benefactor with so much spontaneous tenderness of +feeling that George, as if in sympathy, warmed into the same theme. +"I can well conceive," said he, "your affection for Mr. Darrell. I +remember, when I was a boy, how powerfully he impressed me, though I saw +but little of him. He was then in the zenith of his career, and had but +few moments to give to a boy like me; but the ring of his voice and the +flash of his eye sent me back to school, dreaming of fame and intent on +prizes. I spent part of one Easter vacation at his house in town; he +bade his son, who was my schoolfellow, invite me." + +LIONEL.--"You knew his son? How Mr. Darrell has felt that loss!" + +GEORGE.--"Heaven often veils its most provident mercy in what to man +seems its sternest inflictions. That poor boy must have changed his +whole nature, if his life had not, to a father like Mr. Darrell, +occasioned grief sharper than his death." + +LIONEL.--"You amaze me. Mr. Darrell spoke of him as a boy of great +promise." + +GEORGE.--"He had that kind of energy which to a father conveys the idea +of promise, and which might deceive those older than himself--a fine +bright-eyed, bold-tongued boy, with just enough awe of his father to +bridle his worst qualities before him." + +LIONEL.--"What were those?" + +GEORGE.--"Headstrong arrogance--relentless cruelty. He had a pride which +would have shamed his father out of pride, had Guy Darrell detected its +nature--purse pride! I remember his father said to me with a half-laugh: +'My boy must not be galled and mortified as I was every hour at school-- +clothes patched and pockets empty.' And so, out of mistaken kindness, +Mr. Darrell ran into the opposite extreme, and the son was proud, not of +his father's fame, but of his father's money, and withal not generous, +nor exactly extravagant, but using money as power-power that allowed him +to insult an equal or to buy a slave. In a word, his nickname at school +was 'Sir Giles Overreach.' His death was the result of his strange +passion for tormenting others. He had a fag who could not swim, and who +had the greatest terror of the water; and it was while driving this child +into the river out of his depth that cramp seized himself, and he was +drowned. Yes, when I think what that boy would have been as a man, +succeeding to Darrell's wealth--and had Darrell persevered (as he would, +perhaps, if the boy had lived) in his public career--to the rank and +titles he would probably have acquired and bequeathed--again, I say, in +man's affliction is often Heaven's mercy." + +Lionel listened aghast. George continued: "Would that I could speak as +plainly to Mr. Darrell himself! For we find constantly in the world that +there is no error that misleads us like the error that is half a truth +wrenched from the other half; and nowhere is such an error so common as +when man applies it to the judgment of some event in his own life, and +separates calamity from consolation." + +LIONEL.--"True; but who could have the heart to tell a mourning father +that his dead son was worthless?" + +GEORGE.--"Alas! my young friend, the preacher must sometimes harden his +own heart if he would strike home to another's soul. But I am not sure +that Mr. Darrell would need so cruel a kindness. I believe that his +clear intellect must have divined some portions of his son's nature which +enabled him to bear the loss with fortitude. And he did bear it bravely. +But now, Mr. Haughton, if you have the rest of the day free, I am about +to make you an unceremonious proposition for its disposal. A lady who +knew Mr. Darrell when she was very young has--a strong desire to form +your acquaintance. She resides on the banks of the Thames, a little +above Twickenham. I have promised to call on her this evening. Shall we +dine together at Richmond? and afterwards we can take a boat to her +villa." + +Lionel at once accepted, thinking so little of the lady that he did not +even ask her name. He was pleased to have a companion with whom he could +talk of Darrell. He asked but delay to write a few lines of affectionate +inquiry to his kinsman at Fawley, and, while he wrote, George took out +Arthur Branthwaite's poems, and resumed their perusal. Lionel having +sealed his letter, George extended the book to him. "Here are some +remarkable poems by a brother-in-law of that remarkable artist, Frank +Vance." + +"Frank Vance! True, he had a brother-in-law a poet. I admire Frank so +much; and, though he professes to sneer at poetry, he is so associated in +my mind with poetical images that I am prepossessed beforehand in favour +of all that brings him, despite himself, in connection with poetry." + +"Tell me then," said George, pointing out a passage in the volume, "what +you think of these lines. My good uncle would call them gibberish. I am +not sure that I can construe them; but when I was your age, I think I +could--what say you?" + +Lionel glanced. "Exquisite indeed!--nothing can be clearer--they express +exactly a sentiment in myself that I could never explain." + +"Just so," said George, laughing. "Youth has a sentiment that it cannot +explain, and the sentiment is expressed in a form of poetry that middle +age cannot construe. It is true that poetry of the grand order interests +equally all ages; but the world ever throws out a poetry not of the +grandest; not meant to be durable--not meant to be universal, but +following the shifts and changes of human sentiment, and just like those +pretty sundials formed by flowers, which bloom to tell the hour, open +their buds to tell it, and, telling it, fade themselves from time." + +Not listening to the critic, Lionel continued to read the poems, +exclaiming, "How exquisite!--how true!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + + IN LIFE, AS IN ART, THE BEAUTIFUL MOVES IN CURVES. + +They have dined.--George Morley takes the oars, and the boat cuts through +the dance of waves flushed by the golden sunset. Beautiful river! which +might furnish the English tale-teller with legends wild as those culled +on shores licked by Hydaspes, and sweet as those which Cephisus ever +blended with the songs of nightingales and the breath of violets! But +what true English poet ever names thee, O Father Thames, without a +melodious tribute? And what child ever whiled away summer noons along +thy grassy banks, nor hallowed thy remembrance among the fairy days of +life? + +Silently Lionel bent over the side of the gliding boat; his mind carried +back to the same soft stream five years ago. How vast a space in his +short existence those five years seemed to fill! And how distant from +the young man, rich in the attributes of wealth, armed with each weapon +of distinction, seemed the hour when the boy had groaned aloud, "'Fortune +is so far, Fame so impossible!'" Farther and farther yet than his +present worldly station from his past seemed the image that had first +called forth in his breast the dreamy sentiment, which the sternest of us +in after life never, utterly forget. Passions rage and vanish, and when +all their storms are gone, yea, it may be, at the verge of the very +grave, we look back and see like a star the female face, even though it +be a child's, that first set us vaguely wondering at the charm in a human +presence, at the void in a smile withdrawn! How many of us could recall +a Beatrice through the gaps of ruined hope, seen, as by the Florentine, +on the earth a guileless infant, in the heavens a spirit glorified! +Yes--Laura was an affectation--Beatrice a reality! + +George's voice broke somewhat distastefully on Lionel's reverie. "We +near our destination, and you have not asked me even the name of the lady +to whom you are to render homage. It is Lady Montfort, widow to the last +Marquess. You have no doubt heard Mr. Darrell speak of her?" + +"Never Mr. Darrell--Colonel Morley often. And in the world I have heard +her cited as perhaps the handsomest, and certainly the haughtiest, woman +in England." + +"Never heard Mr. Darrell mention her! that is strange indeed," said +George Morley, catching at Lionel's first words, and unnoticing his after +comment. "She was much in his house as a child, shared in his daughter's +education." + +"Perhaps for that very reason he shuns her name. Never but once did I +hear him allude to his daughter; nor can I wonder at that, if it be true, +as I have been told by people who seem to know very little of the +particulars, that, while yet scarcely out of the nursery, she fled from +his house with some low adventurer--a Mr. Hammond--died abroad the first +year of that unhappy marriage." + +"Yes, that is the correct outline of the story; and, as you guess, it +explains why Mr. Darrell avoids mention of one, whom he associates with +his daughter's name; though, if you desire a theme dear to Lady Montfort, +you can select none that more interests her grateful heart than praise of +the man who saved her mother from penury, and secured to herself the +accomplishments and instruction which have been her chief solace." + +"Chief solace! Was she not happy with Lord Montfort? What sort of man +was he?" + +"I owe to Lord Montfort the living I hold, and I can remember the good +qualities alone of a benefactor. If Lady Montfort was not happy with +him, it is just to both to say that she never complained. But there is +much in Lady Montfort's character which the Marquess apparently failed to +appreciate; at all events, they had little in common, and what was called +Lady Montfort's haughtiness was perhaps but the dignity with which a +woman of grand nature checks the pity that would debase her--the +admiration that would sully--guards her own beauty, and protects her +husband's name. Here we are. Will you stay for a few minutes in the +boat, while I go to prepare Lady Montfort for your visit?" + +George leapt ashore, and Lionel remained under the covert of mighty +willows that dipped their leaves into the wave. Looking through the +green interstices of the foliage, he saw at the far end of the lawn, on a +curving bank by which the glittering tide shot oblique, a simple arbour- +an arbour like that from which he had looked upon summer stars five. +years ago--not so densely covered with the honeysuckle; still the +honeysuckle, recently trained there, was fast creeping up the sides; and +through the trellis of the woodwork and the leaves of the flowering +shrub, he just caught a glimpse of some form within--the white robe of a +female form in a slow gentle movement-tending perhaps the flowers that +wreathed the arbour. Now it was still, now it stirred again; now it was +suddenly lost to view. Had the inmate left the arbour? Was the inmate +Lady Montfort? George Morley's step had not passed in that direction. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + + A QUIET SCENE-AN UNQUIET HEART. + +Meanwhile, not far from the willow-bank which sheltered Lionel, but far +enough to be out of her sight and beyond her hearing, George Morley found +Lady Montfort seated alone. It was a spot on which Milton might have +placed the lady in "Comus"--a circle of the smoothest sward, ringed +everywhere (except at one opening which left the glassy river in full +view) with thick bosks of dark evergreens and shrubs of livelier verdure; +oak and chest nut backing and overhanging all. Flowers, too, raised on +rustic tiers and stages; a tiny fountain, shooting up from a basin +starred with the water-lily; a rustic table, on which lay hooks and the +implements of woman's graceful work; so that the place had the home-look +of a chamber, and spoke that intense love of the out-door life which +abounds in our old poets from Chaucer down to the day when minstrels, +polished into wits, took to Will's Coffee-house, and the lark came no +more to bid bards + + "Good morrow + From his watch-tower in the skies." + +But long since, thank Heaven we have again got back the English poetry +which chimes to the babble of the waters, and the riot of the birds; and +just as that poetry is the freshest which the out-door life has the most +nourished, so I believe that there is no surer sign of the rich vitality +which finds its raciest joys in sources the most innocent, than the +childlike taste for that same out-door life. Whether you take from +fortune the palace or the cottage, add to your chambers a hall in the +courts of Nature. Let the earth but give you room to stand on; well, +look up--Is it nothing to have for your roof-tree--Heaven? + +Caroline Montfort (be her titles dropped) is changed since we last saw +her. The beauty is not less in degree, but it has gained in one +attribute, lost in another; it commands less, it touches more. Still in +deep mourning, the sombre dress throws a paler shade over the cheek. The +eyes, more sunken beneath the brow, appear larger, softer. There is that +expression of fatigue which either accompanies impaired health or +succeeds to mental struggle and disquietude. But the coldness or pride +of mien which was peculiar to Caroline as a wife is gone--as if in +widowhood it was no longer needed. A something like humility prevailed +over the look and the bearing which had been so tranquilly majestic. As +at the approach of her cousin she started from her seat, there was a +nervous tremor in her eagerness; a rush of colour to the cheeks; an +anxious quivering of the lip; a flutter in the tones of the sweet low +voice: "Well, George." + +"Mr. Darrell is not in London; he went to Fawley three days ago; at least +he is there now. I have this from my uncle, to whom he wrote; and whom +his departure has vexed and saddened." + +"Three days ago! It must have been he, then! I was not deceived," +murmured Caroline, and her eyes wandered mound. + +"There is no truth in the report you heard that he was to marry Honoria +Vipont. My uncle thinks he will never marry again, and implies that he +has resumed his solitary life at Fawley with a resolve to quit it no +more." + +Lady Montfort listened silently, bending her face over the fountain, and +dropping amidst its playful spray the leaves of a rose which she had +abstractedly plucked as George was speaking. + +"I have, therefore, fulfilled your commission so far," renewed George +Morley. "I have ascertained that Mr. Darrell is alive, and doubtless +well; so that it could not have been his ghost that startled you amidst +yonder thicket. But I have done more: I have forestalled the wish you +expressed to become acquainted with young Haughton; and your object in +postponing the accomplishment of that wish while Mr. Darrell himself was +in town having ceased with Mr. Darrell's departure, I have ventured to +bring the young man with me. He is in the boat yonder. Will you receive +him? Or--but, my dear cousin, are you not too unwell today? What is the +matter? Oh, I can easily make an excuse for you to Haughton. I will run +and do so." + +"No, George, no. I am as well as usual. I will see Mr. Haughton. All +that you have heard of him, and have told me, interests me so much in his +favour; and besides--" She did not finish the sentence; but led away by +some other thought, asked, "Have you no news of our missing friend?" + +"None as yet; but in a few days I shall renew my search. Now, then, I +will go for Haughton." + +"Do so; and George, when you have presented him to me, will you kindly +join that dear anxious child yonder! + +"She is in the new arbour, or near it-her favourite spot. You must +sustain her spirits, and give her hope. You cannot guess how eagerly she +looks forward to your visits, and how gratefully she relies on your +exertions." + +George shook his head half despondingly, and saying briefly, "My +exertions have established no claim to her gratitude as yet," went +quickly back for Lionel. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + + SOMETHING ON AN OLD SUBJECT, WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SAID BEFORE + +Although Lionel was prepared to see a very handsome woman in Lady +Montfort, the beauty of her countenance took him by surprise. No +preparation by the eulogies of description can lessen the effect that +the first sight of a beautiful object produces upon a mind to which +refinement of idea gives an accurate and quick comprehension of beauty. +Be it a work of art, a scene in nature, or, rarest of all, a human face +divine, a beauty never before beheld strikes us with hidden pleasure, +like a burst of light. And it is a pleasure that elevates; the +imagination feels itself richer by a new idea of excellence; for not only +is real beauty wholly original, having no prototype, but its immediate +influence is spiritual. It may seem strange--I appeal to every observant +artist if the assertion be not true--but the first sight of the most +perfect order of female beauty, rather than courting, rebukes and strikes +back, every grosser instinct that would alloy admiration. There must be +some meanness and blemish in the beauty which the sensualist no sooner +beholds than he covets. In the higher incarnation of the abstract idea +which runs through all our notions of moral good and celestial purity-- +even if the moment the eye sees the heart loves the image--the love has +in it something of the reverence which it was said the charms of Virtue +would produce could her form be made visible; nor could mere human love +obtrude itself till the sweet awe of the first effect had been +familiarised away. And I appreheud that it is this exalting or +etherealising attribute of beauty to which all poets, all writers who +would poetise the realities of life, have unconsciously rendered homage, +in the rank to which they elevate what, stripped of such attribute, would +be but a gaudy idol of painted clay. If, from the loftiest epic to the +tritest novel, a heroine is often little more than a name to which we are +called upon to bow, as to a symbol representing beauty, and if we +ourselves (be we ever so indifferent in our common life to fair faces) +feel that, in art at least, imagination needs an image of the Beautiful-- +if, in a word, both poet and reader here would not be left excuseless, it +is because in our inmost hearts there is a sentiment which links the +ideal of beauty with the Supersensual. Wouldst thou, for instance, form +some vague conception of the shape worn by a pure soul released? wouldst +thou give to it the likeness of an ugly hag? or wouldst thou not ransack +all thy remembrances and conceptions of forms most beauteous to clothe +the holy image? Do so: now bring it thus robed with the richest graces +before thy mind's eye. Well, seest thou now the excuse for poets in the +rank they give to BEAUTY? Seest thou now how high from the realm of the +senses soars the mysterious Archetype? Without the idea of beauty, +couldst thou conceive a form in which to clothe a soul that has entered +heaven? + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + + AGREEABLE SURPRISES ARE THE PERQUISITES OF YOUTH. + +If the beauty of Lady Montfort's countenance took Lionel by surprise, +still more might he wonder at the winning kindness of her address--a +kindness of look, manner, voice, which seemed to welcome him not as a +chance acquaintance but as a new-found relation. The first few +sentences, in giving them a subject of common interest, introduced into +their converse a sort of confiding household familiarity. For Lionel, +ascribing Lady Montfort's gracious reception to her early recollections +of his kinsman, began at once to speak of Guy Darrell; and in a little +time they were walking over the turf, or through the winding alleys of +the garden, linking talk to the same theme, she by question, he by +answer--he, charmed to expatiate--she, pleased to listen--and liking each +other more and more, as she recognised in all he said a bright young +heart, overflowing with grateful and proud affection, and as he felt +instinctively that he was with one who sympathised in his enthusiasm--one +who had known the great man in his busy day, ere the rush of his career +had paused, whose childhood had lent a smile to the great man's home +before childhood and smile had left it. + +As they thus conversed, Lionel now and then, in the turns of their walk, +caught a glimpse of George Morley in the distance, walking also side by +side with some young companion, and ever as he caught that glimpse a +strange restless curiosity shot across his mind, and distracted it even +from praise of Guy Darrell. Who could that be with George? Was it a +relation of Lady Montfort's? The figure was not in mourning; its shape +seemed slight and youthful--now it passes by that acacia tree,--standing +for a moment apart and distinct from George's shadow, but its own outline +dim in the deepening twilight--now it has passed on, lost amongst the +laurels. + +A turn in the walk brought Lionel and Lady Montfort before the windows of +the house, which was not large for the rank of the owner, but commodious, +with no pretence to architectural beauty--dark-red brick, a century and a +half old--irregular; jutting forth here, receding there, so as to produce +that depth of light and shadow which lends a certain picturesque charm +even to the least ornate buildings--a charm to which the Gothic +architecture owes half its beauty. Jessamine, roses, wooodbine, ivy, +trained up the angles and between the windows. Altogether the house had +that air of HOME which had been wanting to the regal formality of +Moutfort Court. One of the windows, raised above the ground by a short +winding stair, stood open. Lights had just been brought into the room +within, and Lionel's eye was caught by the gleam. Lady Montfort turned +up the stair, and Lionel followed her into the apartment. A harp stood +at one corner--not far from it a piano and music-stand. On one of the +tables there were the implements of drawing--a sketch in water-colours +half finished. + +"Our work-room," said Lady Montfort, with a warm cheerful smile, and yet +Lionel could see that tears were in her eyes--" mine and my dear pupil's. +Yes, that harp is hers. Is he still fond of music--I mean Mr. Darrell?" + +"Yes, though he does not care for it in crowds; but he can listen for +hours to Fairthorn's flute. You remember Mr. Fairthorn?" + +"Ay, I remember him," answered Lady Montfort softly. "Mr. Darrell then +likes his music, still?" + +Lionel here uttered an exclamation of more than surprise. He had turned +to examine the water-colour sketch--a rustic inn, a honeysuckle arbour, +a river in front; a boat yonder--just begun. + +"I know the spot!" he cried. "Did you make the sketch of it?" + +"I? no; it is hers--my pupil's--my adopted child's." Lionel's dark eyes +turned to Lady Montfort's wistfully, inquiringly; they asked what his +lips could not presume to ask. "Your adopted child--what is she?--who?" + +As if answering to the eyes, Lady Montfort said: "Wait here a moment; I +will go for her." + +She left him, descended the stairs into the garden, joined George Morley +and his companion; took aside the former, whispered him, then drawing the +arm of the latter within her own, led her back into the room, while +George Morley remained in the garden, throwing himself on a bench, and +gazing on the stars as they now came forth, fast and frequent, though one +by one. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + + "Quem Fors dierum cunque dabit + Lucro appone."--HORAT. + +Lionel stood, expectant, in the centre of the room, and as the two female +forms entered, the lights were full upon their faces. That younger face +--it is she--it is she, the unforgotten--the long-lost. Instinctively, +as if no years had rolled between--as if she were still the little child, +he the boy who had coveted such a sister--he sprang forward and opened +his arms, and as suddenly halted, dropped the arms to, his side, +blushing, confused, abashed. She! that vagrant child!--she! that form +so elegant--that great peeress's pupil--adopted daughter, she the poor +wandering Sophy! She!--impossible! + +But her eyes, at first downcast, are now fixed on him. She, too, starts +--not forward, but in recoil; she, too, raises her arms, not to open, but +to press them to her breast; and she, too, as suddenly checks an impulse, +and stands, like him, blushing, confused, abashed. + +"Yes," said Caroline Montfort, drawing Sophy nearer to her breast, "yes, +you will both forgive me for the surprise. Yes, you do see before you, +grown up to become the pride of those who cherish her, that Sophy who--" + +"Sophy!" cried Lionel advancing; "it is so, then! I knew you were no +stroller's grandchild." + +Sophy drew up: "I am, I am his grandchild, and as proud to be so as I was +then." + +"Pardon me, pardon me; I meant to say that he too was not what be seemed. +You forgive me," extending his hand, and Sophy's soft hand fell into his +forgivingly. + +"But he lives? is well? is here? is--" Sophy burst into tears, and Lady +Montfort made a sign to Lionel to go into the garden, and leave them. +Reluctantly and dizzily, as one in a dream, he obeyed, leaving the +vagrant's grandchild to be soothed in the fostering arms of her whom, an +hour or two ago, he knew but by the titles of her rank and the reputation +of her pride. + +It was not many minutes before Lady Montfort rejoined him. + +"You touched unawares," said she, "upon the poor child's most anxious +cause of sorrow. Her grandfather; for whom her affection is so +sensitively keen, has disappeared. I will speak of that later; and if +you wish, you shall be taken into our consultations. But--" she paused, +looked into his face-open, loyal face, face of gentleman--with heart of +man in its eyes, soul of man on its brow; face formed to look up to the +stars which now lighted it--and laying her hand lightly on his shoulder, +resumed with hesitating voice: "but I feel like a culprit in asking you +what, nevertheless, I must ask, as an imperative condition, if your +visits here are to be renewed--if your intimacy here is to be +established. And unless you comply with that condition, come no more; +we cannot confide in each other." + +"Oh, Lady Montfort, impose any condition. I promise beforehand." + +"Not beforehand. The condition is this: inviolable secrecy. You will +not mention to any one your visits here; your introduction to me; your +discovery of the stroller's grandchild in my adopted daughter." + +"Not to Mr. Darrell?" + +"To him least of all; but this I add, it is for Mr. Darrell's sake that I +insist on such concealment; and I trust the concealment will not be long +protracted." + +"For Mr. Darrell's sake?" + +"For the sake of his happiness," cried Lady Montfort, clasping her hands. +"My debt to him is larger far than yours; and in thus appealing to you, +I scheme to pay back a part of it. Do you trust me?" + +"I do, I do." + +And from that evening Lionel Haughton became the constant visitor in that +house. + +Two or three days afterwards Colonel Morley, quitting England for a +German Spa at which he annually recruited himself for a few weeks, +relieved Lionel from the embarrassment of any questions which that shrewd +observer might otherwise have addressed to him. London itself was now +empty. Lionel found a quiet lodging in the vicinity of Twickenham. And +when his foot passed along the shady lane through yon wicket gate into +that region of turf and flowers, he felt as might have felt that famous +Minstrel of Ercildoun, when, blessed with the privilege to enter +Fairyland at will, the Rhymer stole to the grassy hillside, and murmured +the spell that unlocks the gates of Oberon, + + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT, V7 *** + +******** This file should be named 7665.txt or 7665.zip ******** + +This eBook was produced by David Widger + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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