Lionel Haughton, having hitherto much improved his chance of
fortune, decides the question, "What will he do with it?"
"I have been seeking you everywhere," said a well-known voice; and a hand
rested lightly on Lionel's shoulder. The boy looked up, startled, but
yet heavily, and saw Guy Darrell, the last man on earth he could have
desired to see. "Will you come in for a few minutes? you are wanted."
"What for? I would rather stay here. Who can want me?"
Darrell, struck by the words and the sullen tone in which they were
uttered, surveyed Lionel's face for an instant, and replied in a voice
involuntarily more kind than usual,--
"Some one very commonplace, but since the Picts went out of fashion, very
necessary to mortals the most sublime. I ought to apologize for his
coming. You threatened to leave me yesterday because of a defect in your
wardrobe. Mr. Fairthorn wrote to my tailor to hasten hither and repair
it. He is here. I commend him to your custom! Don't despise him
because he makes for a man of my remote generation. Tailors are keen
observers and do not grow out of date so quickly as politicians."
The words were said with a playful good-humour very uncommon to Mr.
Darrell. The intention was obviously kind and kinsmanlike. Lionel
sprang to his feet; his lip curled, his eye flashed, and his crest rose.
"No, sir; I will not stoop to this! I will not be clothed by your
charity,--yours! I will not submit to an implied taunt upon my poor
mother's ignorance of the manners of a rank to which she was not born!
You said we might not like each other, and, if so, we should part
forever. I do not like you, and I will go!" He turned abruptly, and
walked to the house--magnanimous. If Mr. Darrell had not been the most
singular of men, he might well have been offended. As it was, though few
were less accessible to surprise, he was surprised. But offended? Judge
for yourself. "I declare," muttered Guy Darrell, gazing on the boy's
receding figure, "I declare that I almost feel as if I could once again
be capable of an emotion! I hope I am not going to like that boy! The
old Darrell blood in his veins, surely. I might have spoken as he did at
his age, but I must have had some better reason for it. What did I say
to justify such an explosion?
"/Quid feci?--ubi lapsus?/ Gone, no doubt, to pack up his knapsack, and
take the Road to Ruin! Shall I let him go? Better for me, if I am
really in danger of liking him; and so be at his mercy to sting--what?
my heart! I defy him; it is dead. No; he shall not go thus. I am the
head of our joint houses. Houses! I wish he had a house, poor boy! And
his grandfather loved me. Let him go? I will beg his pardon first; and
he may dine in his drawers if that will settle the matter."
Thus, no less magnanimous than Lionel, did this misanthropical man follow
his ungracious cousin. "Ha!" cried Darrell, suddenly, as, approaching
the threshold, he saw Mr. Fairthorn at the dining-room window occupied in
nibbing a pen upon an ivory thumb-stall--"I have hit it! That abominable
Fairthorn has been shedding its prickles! How could I trust flesh and
blood to such a bramble? I'll know what it was this instant!" Vain
menace! No sooner did Mr. Fairthorn catch glimpse of Darrell's
countenance within ten yards of the porch, than, his conscience taking
alarm, he rushed incontinent from the window, the apartment, and, ere
Darrell could fling open the door, was lost in some lair--"nullis
penetrabilis astris"--in that sponge-like and cavernous abode wherewith
benignant Providence had suited the locality to the creature.