Showing that if a good face is a letter of recommendation, a good
heart is a letter of credit.
The next day they rode forth, host and guest, and that ride proved an
eventful crisis in the fortune of Lionel Haughton. Hitherto I have
elaborately dwelt on the fact that whatever the regard Darrell might
feel for him, it was a regard apart from that interest which accepts a
responsibility and links to itself a fate. And even if, at moments, the
powerful and wealthy man had felt that interest, he had thrust it from
him. That he meant to be generous was indeed certain, and this he had
typically shown in a very trite matter-of-fact way. The tailor, whose
visit had led to such perturbation, had received instructions beyond the
mere supply of the raiment for which he had been summoned; and a large
patent portmanteau, containing all that might constitute the liberal
outfit of a young man in the rank of gentleman, had arrived at Fawley,
and amazed and moved Lionel, whom Darrell had by this time thoroughly
reconciled to the acceptance of benefits. The gift denoted this:
"In recognizing you as kinsman, I shall henceforth provide for you as
gentleman." Darrell indeed meditated applying for an appointment in one
of the public offices, the settlement of a liberal allowance, and a
parting shake of the hand, which should imply, "I have now behaved as
becomes me: the rest belongs to you. We may never meet again. There is
no reason why this good-by may not be forever."
But in the course of that ride, Darrell's intentions changed. Wherefore?
You will never guess! Nothing so remote as the distance between cause
and effect, and the cause for the effect here was--poor little Sophy.
The day was fresh, with a lovely breeze, as the two riders rode briskly
over the turf of rolling commons, with the feathery boughs of
neighbouring woodlands tossed joyously to and fro by the sportive summer
wind. The exhilarating exercise and air raised Lionel's spirits, and
released his tongue from all trammels; and when a boy is in high spirits,
ten to one but he grows a frank egotist, feels the teeming life of his
individuality, and talks about himself. Quite unconsciously, Lionel
rattled out gay anecdotes of his school-days; his quarrel with a
demoniacal usher; how he ran away; what befell him; how the doctor went
after, and brought him back; how splendidly the doctor behaved,--neither
flogged nor expelled him, but after patiently listening, while he rebuked
the pupil, dismissed the usher, to the joy of the whole academy; how he
fought the head boy in the school for calling the doctor a sneak; how,
licked twice, he yet fought that head boy a third time, and licked him;
how, when head boy himself, he had roused the whole school into a civil
war, dividing the boys into Cavaliers and Roundheads; how clay was rolled
out into cannon-balls and pistol-shots, sticks shaped into swords, the
playground disturbed to construct fortifications; how a slovenly stout
boy enacted Cromwell; how he himself was elevated into Prince Rupert; and
how, reversing all history, and infamously degrading Cromwell, Rupert
would not consent to be beaten; and Cromwell at the last, disabled by an
untoward blow across the knuckles, ignominiously yielded himself
prisoner, was tried by a court-martial, and sentenced to be shot! To all
this rubbish did Darrell incline his patient ear,--not encouraging, not
interrupting, but sometimes stifling a sigh at the sound of Lionel's
merry laugh, or the sight of his fair face, with heightened glow on his
cheeks, and his long silky hair, worthy the name of lovelocks, blown by
the wind from the open loyal features, which might well have graced the
portrait of some youthful Cavalier. On bounded the Spanish jennet, on
rattled the boy rider. He had left school now, in his headlong talk; he
was describing his first friendship with Frank Vance, as a lodger at his
mother's; how example fired him, and he took to sketch-work and painting;
how kindly Vance gave him lessons; how at one time he wished to be a
painter; how much the mere idea of such a thing vexed his mother, and how
little she was moved when he told her that Titian was of a very ancient
family, and that Francis I., archetype of gentleman, visited Leonardo da
Vinci's sick-bed; and that Henry VIII. had said to a pert lord who had
snubbed Holbein, "I can make a lord any day, but I cannot make a
Holbein!" how Mrs. Haughton still confounded all painters in the general
image of the painter and the plumber who had cheated her so shamefully in
the renewed window-sashes and redecorated walls, which Time and the four
children of an Irish family had made necessary to the letting of the
first floor. And these playful allusions to the maternal ideas were
still not irreverent, but contrived so as rather to prepossess Darrell in
Mrs. Haughton's favour by bringing out traits of a simple natural mother,
too proud, perhaps, of her only son, not caring what she did, how she
worked, so that he might not lose caste as a born Haughton. Darrell
understood, and nodded his head approvingly. "Certainly," he said,
speaking almost for the first time, "Fame confers a rank above that of
gentlemen and of kings; and as soon as she issues her patent of nobility,
it matters not a straw whether the recipient be the son of a Bourbon or
of a tallow-chandler. But if Fame withhold her patent; if a well-born
man paint aldermen, and be not famous (and I dare say you would have been
neither a Titian nor a Holbein),--why, he might as well be a painter and
plumber, and has a better chance even of bread and cheese by standing to
his post as gentleman. Mrs. Haughton was right, and I respect her."
"Quite right. If I lived to the age of Methuselah, I could not paint a
head like Frank Vance."
"And even he is not famous yet. Never heard of him."
"He will be famous: I am sure of it; and if you lived in London, you
would hear of him even now. Oh, sir! such a portrait as he painted the
other day! But I must tell you all about it." And therewith Lionel
plunged at once, medias res, into the brief broken epic of little Sophy,
and the eccentric infirm Belisarius for whose sake she first toiled and
then begged; with what artless eloquence he brought out the colours of
the whole story,--now its humour, now its pathos; with what beautifying
sympathy he adorned the image of the little vagrant girl, with her mien
of gentlewoman and her simplicity of child; the river excursion to
Hampton Court; her still delight; how annoyed he felt when Vance seemed
ashamed of her before those fine people; the orchard scene in which he
had read Darrell's letter, that, for the time, drove her from the
foremost place in his thoughts; the return home, the parting, her wistful
look back, the visit to the Cobbler's next day; even her farewell gift,
the nursery poem, with the lines written on the fly-leaf, he had them by
heart! Darrell, the grand advocate, felt he could not have produced on a
jury, with those elements, the effect which that boy-narrator produced on
his granite self.
"And, oh, sir!" cried Lionel, checking his horse, and even arresting
Darrell's with bold right hand--"oh," said he, as he brought his moist
and pleading eyes in full battery upon the shaken fort to which he had
mined his way--"oh, sir! you are so wise and rich and kind, do rescue
that poor child from the penury and hardships of such a life! If you
could but have seen and heard her! She could never have been born to it!
You look away: I offend you! I have no right to tax your benevolence for
others; but, instead of showering favours upon me, so little would
suffice for her!--if she were but above positive want, with that old man
(she would not be happy without him), safe in such a cottage as you give
to your own peasants! I am a man, or shall be one soon; I can wrestle
with the world, and force my way somehow; but that delicate child, a
village show, or a beggar on the high road!--no mother, no brother, no
one but that broken-down cripple, leaning upon her arm as his crutch. I
cannot bear to think of it. I am sure I shall meet her again somewhere;
and when I do, may I not write to you, and will you not come to her help?
Do speak; do say 'Yes,' Mr. Darrell."
The rich man's breast heaved slightly; he closed his eyes, but for a
moment. There was a short and sharp struggle with his better self, and
the better self conquered.
"Let go my reins; see, my horse puts down his ears; he may do you a
mischief. Now canter on: you shall be satisfied. Give me a moment to
--to unbutton my coat: it is too tight for me."