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.