DARRELL--mystery in his past life--What has he done with it?
Some days passed, each day varying little from the other. It was the
habit of Darrell if he went late to rest to rise early. He never allowed
himself more than five hours sleep. A man greater than Guy Darrell--Sir
Walter Raleigh--carved from the solid day no larger a slice for Morpheus.
And it was this habit perhaps, yet more than temperance in diet, which
preserved to Darrell his remarkable youthfulness of aspect and frame, so
that at fifty-two he looked, and really was, younger than many a strong
man of thirty-five. For, certain it is, that on entering middle life,
he who would keep his brain clear, his step elastic, his muscles from
fleshiness, his nerves from tremor,--in a word, retain his youth in spite
of the register,--should beware of long slumbers. Nothing ages like
laziness. The hours before breakfast Darrell devoted first to exercise,
whatever the weather; next to his calm scientific pursuits. At ten
o'clock punctually he rode out alone and seldom returned till late in
the afternoon. Then he would stroll forth with Lionel into devious
woodlands, or lounge with him along the margin of the lake, or lie down
on the tedded grass, call the boy's attention to the insect populace
which sports out its happy life in the summer months, and treat of the
ways and habits of each varying species, with a quaint learning, half
humorous, half grave. He was a minute observer and an accomplished
naturalist. His range of knowledge was, indeed, amazingly large for a
man who has had to pass his best years in a dry and absorbing study:
necessarily not so profound in each section as that of a special
professor; but if the science was often on the surface, the thoughts he
deduced from what he knew were as often original and deep. A maxim of
his, which he dropped out one day to Lionel in his careless manner, but
pointed diction, may perhaps illustrate his own practice and its results
"Never think it enough to have solved the problem started by another mind
till you have deduced from it a corollary of your own."
After dinner, which was not over till past eight o'clock, they always
adjourned to the library, Fairthorn vanishing into a recess, Darrell and
Lionel each with his several book, then an air on the flute, and each to
his own room before eleven. No life could be more methodical; yet to
Lionel it had an animating charm, for his interest in his host daily
increased, and varied his thoughts with perpetual occupation. Darrell,
on the contrary, while more kind and cordial, more cautiously on his
guard not to wound his young guest's susceptibilities than he had been
before the quarrel and its reconciliation, did not seem to feel for
Lionel the active interest which Lionel felt for him. He did not, as
most clever men are apt to do in their intercourse with youth, attempt
to draw him out, plumb his intellect, or guide his tastes. If he was
at times instructive, it was because talk fell on subjects on which it
pleased himself to touch, and in which he could not speak without
involuntarily instructing. Nor did he ever allure the boy to talk of his
school-days, of his friends, of his predilections, his hopes, his future.
In short, had you observed them together, you would have never supposed
they were connections, that one could and ought to influence and direct
the career of the other. You would have said the host certainly liked
the guest, as any man would like a promising, warm-hearted, high-
spirited, graceful boy, under his own roof for a short time, but who felt
that that boy was nothing to him; would soon pass from his eye; form
friends, pursuits, aims, with which he could be in no way commingled, for
which he should be wholly irresponsible. There was also this peculiarity
in Darrell's conversation; if he never spoke of his guest's past and
future, neither did he ever do more than advert in the most general terms
to his own. Of that grand stage on which he had been so brilliant an
actor he imparted no reminiscences; of those great men, the leaders of
his age, with whom he had mingled familiarly, he told no anecdotes.
Equally silent was he as to the earlier steps in his career, the modes
by which he had studied, the accidents of which he had seized advantage,
--silent there as upon the causes he had gained, or the debates he had
adorned. Never could you have supposed that this man, still in the prime
of public life, had been the theme of journals and the boast of party.
Neither did he ever, as men who talk easily at their own hearths are
prone to do, speak of projects in the future, even though the projects be
no vaster than the planting of a tree or the alteration of a parterre,--
projects with which rural life so copiously and so innocently teems. The
past seemed as if it had left to him no memory, the future as if it
stored for him no desire. But did the past leave no memory? Why then
at intervals would the book slide from his eye, the head sink upon the
breast, and a shade of unutterable dejection darken over the grand beauty
of that strong stern countenance? Still that dejection was not morbidly
fed and encouraged, for he would fling it from him with a quick impatient
gesture of the head, resume the book resolutely, or change it for another
which induced fresh trains of thought, or look over Lionel's shoulder,
and make some subtile comment on his choice, or call on Fairthorn for the
flute; and in a few minutes the face was severely serene again. And be
it here said, that it is only in the poetry of young gentlemen, or the
prose of lady novelists, that a man in good health and of sound intellect
wears the livery of unvarying gloom. However great his causes of sorrow,
he does not forever parade its ostentatious mourning, nor follow the
hearse of his hopes with the long face of an undertaker. He will still
have his gleams of cheerfulness, his moments of good humour. The old
smile will sometimes light the eye, and awake the old playfulness of the
lip. But what a great and critical sorrow does leave behind is often far
worse than the sorrow itself has been. It is a change in the inner man,
which strands him, as Guy Darrell seemed stranded, upon the shoal of the
Present; which the more he strives manfully to bear his burden warns him
the more from dwelling on the Past; and the more impressively it enforces
the lesson of the vanity of human wishes strikes the more from his
reckoning illusive hopes in the Future. Thus out of our threefold
existence two parts are annihilated,--the what has been, the what shall
be. We fold our arms, stand upon the petty and steep cragstone, which
alone looms out of the Measureless Sea, and say to ourselves, looking
neither backward nor beyond, "Let us bear what is;" and so for the moment
the eye can lighten and the lip can smile.
Lionel could no longer glean from Mr. Fairthorn any stray hints upon
the family records. That gentleman had evidently been reprimanded for
indiscretion, or warned against its repetition, and he became as reserved
and mum as if he had just emerged from the cave of Trophonius. Indeed he
shunned trusting himself again alone to Lionel, and affecting a long
arrear of correspondence on behalf of his employer, left the lad during
the forenoons to solitary angling, or social intercourse with the swans
and the tame doe. But from some mystic concealment within doors would
often float far into the open air the melodies of that magic flute; and
the boy would glide back, along the dark-red mournful walls of the old
house, or the futile pomp of pilastered arcades in the uncompleted new
one, to listen to the sound: listening, he, blissful boy, forgot the
present; he seized the unchallenged royalty of his years. For him no
rebels in the past conspired with poison to the wine-cup, murder to the
sleep. No deserts in the future, arresting the march of ambition, said,
"Here are sands for a pilgrim, not fields for a conqueror."