Darrell and Lionel.
Darrell had received Lionel with some evident embarrassment, which soon
yielded to affectionate warmth. He took to the young man whose fortunes
he had so improved; he felt that with the improved fortunes the young
man's whole being was improved: assured position, early commune with the
best social circles, in which the equality of fashion smooths away all
disparities in rank, had softened in Lionel much of the wayward and
morbid irritability of his boyish pride; but the high spirit, the
generous love of independence, the scorn of mercenary calculation, were
strong as ever; these were in the grain of his nature. In common with
all who in youth aspire to be one day noted from the "undistinguishable
many," Lionel had formed to himself a certain ideal standard, above the
ordinary level of what the world is contented to call honest, or esteem
clever. He admitted into his estimate of life the heroic element, not
undesirable even in the most practical point of view, for the world is
so in the habit of decrying; of disbelieving in high motives and pure
emotions; of daguerreotyping itself with all its ugliest wrinkles,
stripped of the true bloom that brightens, of the true expression that
redeems, those defects which it invites the sun to limn, that we shall
never judge human nature aright, if we do not set out in life with our
gaze on its fairest beauties, and our belief in its latent good. In a
word we should begin with the Heroic, if we would learn the Human. But
though to himself Lionel thus secretly prescribed a certain superiority
of type, to be sedulously aimed at, even if never actually attained, he
was wholly without pedantry and arrogance towards his own contemporaries.
From this he was saved not only by good-nature, animal spirits, frank
hardihood, but by the very affluence of ideas which animated his tongue,
coloured his language, and whether to young or old, wise or dull, made
his conversation racy and original. He was a delightful companion; and
if he had taken much instruction from those older and wiser than himself,
he so bathed that instruction in the fresh fountain of his own lively
intelligence, so warmed it at his own beating impulsive heart, that he
could make an old man's gleanings from experience seem a young man's
guesses into truth. Faults he had, of course,--chiefly the faults common
at his age; amongst them, perhaps, the most dangerous were,--firstly,
carelessness in money matters; secondly, a distaste for advice in which
prudence was visibly predominant. His tastes were not in reality
extravagant: but money slipped through his hands, leaving little to show
for it; and when his quarterly allowance became due, ample though it
was,--too ample, perhaps,--debts wholly forgotten started up to seize
hold of it. And debts as yet being manageable were not regarded with
sufficient horror. Paid or put aside, as the case might be, they were
merely looked upon as bores. Youth is in danger till it learn to look
upon them as furies. For advice, he took it with pleasure, when clothed
with elegance and art, when it addressed ambition, when it exalted the
loftier virtues. But advice, practical and prosy, went in at one ear and
out at the other. In fact, with many talents, he had yet no adequate
ballast of common-sense; and if ever he get enough to steady his bark
through life's trying voyage, the necessity of so much dull weight must
be forcibly stricken home less to his reason than his imagination or his
heart. But if, somehow or other, he get it not, I will not insure his
vessel.
I know not if Lionel Haughton had genius; he never assumed that he had:
but he had something more like genius than that prototype, RESOLVE, of
which he boasted to the artist. He had YOUTH,--real youth,--youth of
mind, youth of heart, youth of soul. Lithe and supple as he moved before
you, with the eye to which light or dew sprang at once from a nature
vibrating to every lofty, every tender thought, he seemed more than
young,--the incarnation of youth.
Darrell took to him at once. Amidst all the engagements crowded on the
important man, he contrived to see Lionel daily. And what may seem
strange, Guy Darrell felt more at home with Lionel Haughton than with any
of his own contemporaries,--than even with Alban Morley. To the last,
indeed, he opened speech with less reserve of certain portions of the
past, or of certain projects in the future. But still, even there, he
adopted a tone of half-playful, half-mournful satire, which might be in
itself disguise. Alban Morley, with all his good qualities, was a man of
the world; as a man of the world, Guy Darrell talked to him. But it was
only a very small part of Guy Darrell the Man, of which the world could
say "mine."
To Lionel he let out, as if involuntarily, the more amiable, tender,
poetic attributes of his varying, complex, uncomprehended character; not
professedly confiding, but not taking pains to conceal. Hearing what
worldlings would call "Sentiment" in Lionel, he seemed to glide softly
down to Lionel's own years and talk "sentiment" in return. After all,
this skilled lawyer, this noted politician, had a great dash of the boy
still in him. Reader, did you ever meet a really clever man who had not?