Fairthorn and Sophy thus made acquaintance, distant and shy at first on

both sides; but it gradually became more frank and cordial. Fairthorn

had an object not altogether friendly in encouraging this intimacy. He

thought, poor man, that he should be enabled to extract from Sophy some

revelations of her early life, which would elucidate, not in favour of

her asserted claims, the mystery that hung upon her parentage. But had

Dick Fairthorn been the astutest of diplomatists, in this hope he would

have been equally disappointed. Sophy had nothing to communicate. Her

ingenuousness utterly baffled the poor flute-player. Out of an innocent,

unconscious kind of spite, on ceasing to pry into Sophy’s descent, he

began to enlarge upon the dignity of Darrell’s. He inflicted on her the

long-winded genealogical memoir, the recital of which had, on a previous

occasion, so nearly driven Lionel Haughton from Fawley. He took her

to see the antiquary’s grave; he spoke to her, as they stood there,

of Darrell’s ambitious boyhood--his arid, laborious manhood--his

determination to restore the fallen line--the very vow he had made to

the father he had so pityingly revered. He sought to impress on her the

consciousness that she was the guest of one who belonged to a race with

whom spotless honour was the all in all; and who had gone through life

with bitter sorrows, but reverencing that race, and vindicating that

honour; Fairthorn’s eye would tremble--his eyes flash on her while he

talked. She, poor child, could not divine why; but she felt that he was

angry with her--speaking at her. In fact, Fairthorn’s prickly tongue was

on the barbed point of exclaiming: “And how dare you foist yourself into

this unsullied lineage--how dare you think that the dead would not turn

in their graves, ere they would make room in the vault of the Darrells

for the daughter of a Jasper Losely!” But though she could not conceive

the musician’s covert meaning in these heraldic discourses, Sophy, with

a justness of discrimination that must have been intuitive, separated

from the more fantastic declamations of the grotesque genealogist

that which was genuine and pathetic in the single image of the last

descendant in a long and gradually falling race, lifting it up once more

into power and note on toiling shoulders, and standing on the verge of

age, with the melancholy consciousness that the effort was successful

only for his fleeting life; that, with all his gold, with all his fame,

the hope which had achieved alike the gold and the fame was a lying

mockery, and that name and race would perish with himself, when the

earth yawned for him beside the antiquary’s grave.

And these recitals made her conceive a more soft and tender interest

in Guy Darrell than she had before admitted; they accounted for the

mournfulness on his brow; they lessened her involuntary awe of that

stateliness of bearing which before had only chilled her as the evidence

of pride.

While Fairthorn and Sophy thus matured acquaintance, Darrell and Waife

were drawing closer and closer to each other. Certainly no one would be

predisposed to suspect any congeniality of taste, intellect, experience,

or emotion, between two men whose lives had been so widely different--in

whose faults or merits the ordinary observer would have seen nothing but

antagonism and contrast. Unquestionably their characters were strikingly

dissimilar, yet there was that in each which the other recognised as

familiar to his own nature. Each had been the victim of his heart; each

had passed over the ploughshare of self-sacrifice. Darrell had offered

up his youth--Waife his age; Darrell to a Father and the unrequiting

Dead--Waife to a Son whose life had become his terror. To one man, NAME

had been an idol; to the other, NAME had been a weed cast away into the

mire. To the one man, unjoyous, evanescent glory--to the other, a shame

that had been borne with a sportive cheerfulness, dashed into sorrow

only when the world’s contumely threatened to despoil Affection of its

food. But there was something akin in their joint experience of earthly

vanities;--so little solace in worldly honours to the triumphant

Orator--so little of misery to the vagrant Mime while his conscience

mutely appealed to Heaven from the verdict of his kind. And as beneath

all the levity and whim of the man reared and nurtured, and fitted by

his characteristic tendencies, to view life through its humours, not

through its passions, there still ran a deep undercurrent of grave and

earnest intellect and feeling--so too, amidst the severer and statelier

texture of the once ambitious, laborious mind, which had conducted

Darrell to renown--amidst all that gathered-up intensity of passion,

which admitted no comedy into Sorrow, and saw in Love but the aspect of

Fate--amidst all this lofty seriousness of soul, there was yet a vivid

capacity of enjoyment--those fine sensibilities to the pleasurable

sun-rays of life, which are constitutional to all GENIUS, no matter how

grave its vocations. True, affliction at last may dull them, as it dulls

all else that we took from Nature when she equipped us for life. Yet,

in the mind of Darrell, affliction had shattered the things most gravely

coveted, even more than it had marred its perceptive acknowledgment of

the sympathies between fancies that move to smiles, and thoughts that

bequeath solemn lessons, or melt to no idle tears. Had Darrell been

placed amidst the circumstances that make happy the homes of earnest

men, Darrell would have been mirthful; had Waife been placed amongst the

circumstances that concentrate talent, and hedge round life with trained

thicksets and belting laurels, Waife would have been grave.

It was not in the earlier conferences that took place in Waife’s

apartment that the subject which had led the old man to Fawley was

brought into discussion. When Waife had sought to introduce it--when,

after Sophy’s arrival, he had looked wistfully into Darrell’s face,

striving to read there the impression she had created, and, unable to

discover, had begun, with tremulous accents, to reopen the cause that

weighed on him--Darrell stopped him at once. “Hush--not yet; remember

that it was in the very moment you first broached this sorrowful topic,

on arriving here, and perceived how different the point of view from

which we two must regard it, that your nerves gave way--your illness

rushed on you. Wait, not only till you are stronger, but till we know

each other better. This subject is one that it becomes us to treat

with all the strength of our reason--with all the calm which either can

impose upon the feelings that ruffle judgment. At present, talk we of

all matters except that, which I promise you shall be fairly discussed

at last.”

Darrell found, however, that his most effective diversion from the

subject connected with Sophy was through another channel in the old

man’s affections, hopes, and fears. George Morley, in repeating the

conversation he had overheard between Waife and Jasper, had naturally,

while clearing the father, somewhat softened the bravado and cynicism

of the son’s language, and more than somewhat brightened the touches of

natural feeling by which the bravado and cynicism had been alternated.

And Darrell had sufficient magnanimity to conquer the repugnance with

which he approached a name associated with so many dark and hateful

memories, and, avoiding as much as possible distinct reference to

Jasper’s past life, to court a consultation on the chances of saving

from the worst the life that yet remained. With whom else, indeed, than

Jasper’s father could Darrell so properly and so unreservedly discuss a

matter in which their interest and their fear were in common?--As though

he were rendering some compensation to Waife for the disappointment he

would experience when Sophy’s claims came to be discussed--if he could

assist in relieving the old man’s mind as to the ultimate fate of the

son for whom he had made so grand a sacrifice, Darrell spoke to Waife

somewhat in detail of the views with which he had instructed Colonel

Morley to find out and to treat with Jasper. He heard from the Colonel

almost daily. Alban had not yet discovered Jasper, nor even succeeded

in tracing Mrs. Crane! But an account of Jasper’s farewell visit to

that den of thieves, from which he had issued safe and triumphant,

had reached the ears of a detective employed by the Colonel, and on

tolerably good terms with Cutts; and it was no small comfort to know

that Jasper had finally broken with those miscreant comrades, and

had never again been seen in their haunts. As Arabella had introduced

herself to Alban by her former name, and neither he nor Darrell was

acquainted with that she now bore, and as no questions on the subject

could be put to Waife during the earlier stages of his illness, so it

was several days before the Colonel had succeeded in tracing her out as

Mrs. Crane of Podden Place--a discovery effected by a distant relation

to whom he had been referred at the famous school of which Arabella

had been the pride, and who was no doubt the owner of those sheepskin

account-books by which the poor grim woman had once vainly sought to

bribe Jasper into honest work. But the house in Podden Place was shut

up--not a soul in charge of it. The houses immediately adjoining it were

tenantless. The Colonel learned, however, from a female servant in

an opposite house, that several days ago she had seen a tall,

powerful-looking man enter Mrs. Crane’s street-door; that she had not

seen him quit it; and that some evenings afterwards, as this servant

was closing up the house in which she served, she had remarked a large

private carriage driving away from Mrs. Crane’s door; that it was too

dark to see who were in the carriage, but she had noticed a woman whom

she felt fully sure was Mrs. Crane’s servant, Bridgett Greggs, on the

box beside the coachman.

Alban had been to the agent employed by Mrs. Crane in the letting of her

houses, but had not there gained any information. The Colonel believed

that Mrs. Crane had succeeded in removing Jasper from London--had,

perhaps, accompanied him abroad. If with her, at all events for the

present he was safe from the stings of want, and with one who had sworn

to save him from his own guilty self. If, however, still in England,

Alban had no doubt, sooner or later, to hunt him up.

Upon the whole, this conjectural information, though unsatisfactory,

allayed much anxiety. Darrell made the most of it in his representations

to Waife. And the old man, as we know, was one not hard to comfort,

never quarrelling irrevocably with Hope.

And now Waife is rapidly recovering. Darrell, after spending the greater

part of several days, intent upon a kind of study from which he had been

estranged for many years, takes to frequent absences for the whole

day; goes up to London by the earliest train, comes back by the

latest. George Morley also goes to London for a few hours. Darrell,

on returning, does not allude to the business which took him to the

metropolis; neither does George, but the latter seems unusually animated

and excited. At length, after one of these excursions, so foreign to his

habits, he and George enter together the old man’s apartment not long

before the early hour at which the convalescent retires to rest. Sophy

was seated on the footstool at Waife’s knee, reading the Bible to him,

his hand resting lightly on her bended head. The sight touched both

George and Darrell; but Darrell of the two was the more affected. What

young, pure voice shall read to HIM the Book of Hope in the evening of

lonely age? Sophy started in some confusion, and as, in quitting the

room, she passed by Darrell, he took her hand gently, and scanned her

features more deliberately, more earnestly than he had ever yet seemed

to do; then he sighed, and dropped the hand, murmuring, “Pardon me.”

Was he seeking to read in that fair face some likeness to the Darrell

lineaments? If he had found it, what then? But when Sophy was gone,

Darrell came straight to Waife with a cheerful brow--with a kindling

eye.

“William Losely,” said he.

“Waife, if you please, sir,” interrupted the old man. “William Losely,”

repeated Darrell, “justice seeks to repair, so far as, alas! it now

can, the wrongs inflicted on the name of William Losely. Your old friend

Alban Morley supplying me with the notes he had made in the matter of

your trial, I arranged the evidence they furnished. The Secretary for

the Home Department is one of my most intimate political friends--a man

of humanity--of sense. I placed that evidence before him. I, George, and

Mr. Hartopp, saw him after he had perused it--”

“My--son--Lizzy’s son!”

“His secret will be kept. The question was not who committed the act

for which you suffered, but whether you were clearly, incontestably,

innocent of the act, and, in pleading guilty, did but sublimely bear the

penalty of another. There will be no new trial--there are none who would

prosecute. I bring back to you the Queen’s free pardon under the Great

Seal. I should explain to you that this form of the royal grace is so

rarely given that it needed all the strength and affecting circumstance

of your peculiar case to justify the Home Secretary in listening, not

only to the interest I could bring to bear in your favour, but to his

own humane inclinations. The pardon under the Great Seal differs from an

ordinary pardon. It purges the blood from the taint of felony--it remits

all the civil disabilities which the mere expiry of a penal sentence

does not remove. In short, as applicable to your case, it becomes

virtually a complete and formal attestation of your innocence. Alban

Morley will take care to apprise those of your old friends who may yet

survive, of that revocation of unjust obloquy, which this royal deed

implies--Alban Morley, who would turn his back on the highest noble in

Britain if but guilty of some jockey trick on the turf! Live henceforth

openly, and in broad daylight if you please; and trust to us three--the

Soldier, the Lawyer, the Churchman--to give to this paper that value

which your Sovereign’s advisers intend it to receive.”

“Your hand now, dear old friend!” cried George. “You remember I

commanded you once to take mine as man and gentleman--as man and

gentleman, now honour me with yours.”

“Is it possible?” faltered Waife, one hand in George’s, the

other extended in imploring appeal to Darrell--“is it possible? I

vindicated--I cleared--and yet no felon’s dock for Jasper!--the son not

criminated by the father’s acquittal! Tell me that! again--again!”

“It is so, believe me. All that rests is to force on that son, if

he have a human heart, the conviction that he will be worse than a

parricide if he will not save himself.”

“And he will--he shall. Oh, that I could but get at him!” exclaimed the

preacher.

“And now,” said Darrell--“now, George, leave us; for now, upon equal

terms, we two fathers can discuss family differences.”

CHAPTER VIII.

SOPHY’S CLAIM EXAMINED AND CANVASSED.

“I take this moment,” said Darrell, when left alone with Waife--(ah,

reader, let us keep to that familiar name to the last!)--“I take

this moment,” said Darrell, “the first moment in which you can feel

thoroughly assured that no prejudice against yourself clouds my judgment

in reference to her whom you believe to be your grandchild, to commence,

and I trust to conclude forever, the subject which twice brought you

within these walls. On the night of your recent arrival here, you

gave this copy of a French woman’s declaration, to the effect that two

infants had been placed out with her to nurse; that one of them was my

poor daughter’s infant, who was about to be taken away from her; that

the other was confided to her by its parent, a French lady, whom she

speaks of as a very liberal and distinguished person, but whose name is

not stated in the paper.”

WAIFE.--“The confession describes that lady as an artiste; distinguished

artiste is the expression-viz., a professional person--a painter--an

actress--a singer--or--”

DARRELL (drily).--“An opera-dancer! I understand the French word

perfectly. And I presume the name is not mentioned in the document, from

motives of delicacy; the child of a distinguished French artiste is

not necessarily born in wedlock. But this lady was very grateful to

the nurse for the care shown to her infant, who was very sickly; and

promised to take the nurse, and the nurse’s husband also, into her

service. The nurse states that she herself was very poor; that the

lady’s offer appeared to her like a permanent provision; that the life

of this artiste’s infant was of the utmost value to her--the life of my

poor daughter’s child of comparative insignificance. But the infant of

the artiste died, and the nurse’s husband put it into his wife’s head to

tell your son (then a widower, and who had seen so little of his child

as to be easily deceived), that it was his infant who died. The nurse

shortly afterwards removed to Paris, taking with her to the artiste’s

house the child who in reality was my daughter’s.”

“It seems very probable, does it not--does it not?” said the ex-comedian

eagerly.

“It seems to me,” replied the ex-lawyer, “very probable that a witness,

entering into court with the confession of one villanous falsehood,

would have little scruple to tell another. But I proceed. This rich and

liberal artiste dies; the nurse’s conscience then suddenly awakens--she

sees Mr. Hammond--she informs him of the fraud she has practised. A lady

of rank, who had known Matilda, and had seen both the infants when both

were living under the nurse’s charge, and observed them more attentively

than your son had done--corroborates the woman’s story, stating that the

artiste’s child had dark eyes instead of blue; that the artiste herself

was never deceived--but, having taken a great fancy to the spurious

infant, was willing to receive and cherish it as her own; and that she

knows several persons who will depose that they heard the artiste say

that the child was not her own. On this evidence your son takes to

himself this child--and this child is your Sophy--and you wish me to

acknowledge her as my daughter’s offspring. Do not look me so earnestly

in the face, my dear and respected guest. It was when you read in my

face what my lips shrank from uttering that your emotions overcame your

strength, and your very mind deserted you. Now, be firmer. Your Sophy

has no need of me--she is under your charge, and your name is cleared.

She has found a friend--a protectress--in her own sex. Lady Montfort’s

rank gives to her a position in the world as high as I could offer; and

as to mere pecuniary provision for her, make your mind easy--it shall be

secured. But bear with me when I add, resolutely and calmly, that this

nurse’s attestation is to me a grosser and poorer attempt at imposture

than I had anticipated; and I am amazed that a man of your abilities

should have been contented to accept it.”

“Oh, Mr. Darrell, don’t say so! It was such a blessing to think, when

my son was lost to me, that I might fill up the void in my heart with

an innocent, loving child. Don’t talk of my abilities. If you, whose

abilities none can question--if you had longed and yearned for such a

comforter--if you had wished--if you wished now this tale to be true,

you would have believed it too; you would believe it now--you would

indeed. Two men look so differently at the same story--one deeply

interested that it should be true--one determined, if possible, to find

it false. Is it not so?”

Darrell smiled slightly, but could not be induced to assent even to so

general a proposition. He felt as if he were pitted against a counsel

who would take advantage of every concession.

Waife continued. “And whatever seems most improbable in this confession,

is rendered probable at once--if--if--we may assume that my unhappy son,

tempted by the desire to--to--”

“Spare yourself--I understand-if your son wished to obtain his wife’s

fortune, and therefore connived at the exchange of the infants, and was

therefore, too, enabled always to corroborate the story of the exchange

whenever it suited him to reclaim the infant, I grant this--and I

grant that the conjecture is sufficiently plausible to justify you in

attaching to it much weight. We will allow that it was his interest at

one time to represent his child, though living, as no more; but you must

allow also that he would have deemed it his interest later, to fasten

upon me, as my daughter’s, a child to whom she never gave birth. Here we

entangle ourselves in a controversy without data, without facts. Let us

close it. Believe what you please. Why should I shake convictions that

render you happy? Be equally forbearing with me. I do full justice to

your Sophy’s charming qualities. In herself, the proudest parent might

rejoice to own her; but I cannot acknowledge her to be the daughter of

Matilda Darrell. And the story that assured you she was your grandchild,

still more convinces me that she is not mine!”

“But be not thus inflexible, I implore you;--you can be so kind, so

gentle;--she would be such a blessing to you--later--perhaps--when I

am dead. I am pleading for your sake--I owe you so much! I should repay

you, if I could but induce you to inquire--and if inquiry should prove

that I am right.”

“I have inquired sufficiently.”

“‘Then I’ll go and find out the nurse. I’ll question her. I’ll--”

“Hold. Be persuaded! Hug your belief! Inquire no farther!”

“Why--why?”

Darrell was mute.

Waife passed and repassed his hand over his brow, and then cried

suddenly: “But if I could prove her not to be my grandchild, then she

might be happy!--then--then-ah, sir, young Haughton tells me that if

she were but the daughter of honest parents--no child of Jasper’s, no

grandchild of mine--then you might not be too proud to bless her at

least as his bride! And, sir, the poor child loves the young man. How

could she help it? And, at her age, life without hope is either very

short, or very, very long! Let me inquire! I should be happy even to

know that she was not my grandchild. I should not love her less; and

then she would have others to love her when I am gone to Lizzy!”

Darrell was deeply moved. To him there was something in this

old man--ever forgetting himself, ever so hurried on by his

heart--something, I say, in this old man, before which Darrell felt his

intellect subdued and his pride silenced and abashed.

“Yes, sir,” said Waife, musingly, “so let it be. I am well now. I will

go to France to-morrow.”

Darrell nerved his courage. He had wished to spare Waife the pain which

his own persuasions caused to himself. Better now to be frank. He

laid his hand on Waife’s shoulder, and looking him in the face, said

solemnly: “I entreat you not! Do you suppose that I would not resume

inquiry in person, nor pause till the truth were made amply clear, if I

had not strong reason to prefer doubt to certainty?”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“There is a woman whose career is, I believe, at this moment revived

into fresh notoriety as the heroine of some drama on the stage of

Paris--a woman who, when years paled her fame and reft her spoils, as a

courtesan renowned for the fools she had beggared, for the young hearts

she had corrupted, sought plunder still by crimes, to which law is less

lenient; charged with swindling, with fraud, with forgery, and at last

more than suspected as a practised poisoner, she escaped by suicide the

judgment of human tribunals.”

“I know of whom you speak--that dreadful Gabrielle Desmarets, but for

whom my sacrifice to Jasper’s future might not have been in vain! It was

to save Sophy from the chance of Jasper’s ever placing her within reach

of that woman’s example that I took her away.”

“Is it not, then, better to forbear asking who were your Sophy’s

parents, than to learn from inquiry that she is indeed your grandchild,

and that her mother was Gabrielle Desmarets?”

Waife uttered a cry like a shriek, and then sate voiceless and aghast.

At last he exclaimed: “I am certain it is not so! Did you ever see that

woman?”

“Never that I know of; but George tells me that he heard your son state

to you that she had made acquaintance with me under another name, and if

there was a design to employ her in confirmation of his tale--if he was

then speaking truth to you, doubtless this was the lady of rank referred

to in the nurse’s confession--doubtless this was the woman once palmed

upon me as Matilda’s confidante. In that case I have seen her. What

then?”

“Mother was not written on her face! She could never have been a mother.

Oh, you may smile, sir; but all my life I have been a reader of the

human face; and there is in the aspect of some women the barrenness as

of stone--no mother’s throb in their bosom--no mother’s kiss on their

lips.”

“I am a poor reader of women’s faces,” said Darrell; “but she must be

very unlike women in general, who allows you to know her a bit better if

you stood reading her face till doomsday. Besides, at the time you saw

Gabrielle Desmarets, her mode of life had perhaps given to her an aspect

not originally in her countenance. And I can only answer your poetic

conceit by a poetic illustration--Niobe turned to stone; but she had a

great many daughters before she petrified. Pardon me, if I would turn

off by a jest a thought that I see would shock you, as myself, if

gravely encouraged. Encourage it not. Let us suppose it only a chance

that inquiry might confirm this conjecture; but let us shun that chance.

Meanwhile, if inquiry is to be made, one more likely than either of us

to get at the truth has promised to make it, and sooner or later we may

learn from her the results--I mean that ill-fated Arabella Fossett, whom

you knew as Crane.”

Waife was silent; but he kept turning in his hand, almost

disconsolately, the document which assoiled him from the felon’s taint,

and said at length, as Darrell was about to leave, “And this thing is of

no use to her, then?”

Darrell came back to the old man’s chair, and said softly: “Friend, do

not fancy that the young have only one path to happiness. You grieve

that I cannot consent to Lionel’s marriage with your Sophy. Dismiss from

your mind the desire for the Impossible. Gently wean from hers what is

but a girl’s first fancy.”

“It is a girl’s first love.”

“And if it be,” said Darrell, calmly, “no complaint more sure to yield

to change of air. I have known a girl as affectionate, as pure, as full

of all womanly virtues, as your Sophy (and I can give her no higher

praise)--loved more deeply than Lionel can love; professing, doubtless

at the time believing, that she also loved for life; betrothed too;

faith solemnised by promise; yet in less than a year she was another’s

wife. Change of air, change of heart! I do not underrate the effect

which a young man, so winning as Lionel, would naturally produce on the

fancy or the feelings of a girl, who as yet, too, has seen no others;

but impressions in youth are characters in the sand. Grave them ever

so deeply, the tide rolls over them; and when the ebb shows the surface

again, the characters are gone, for the sands are shifted. Courage! Lady

Montfort will present to her others with forms as fair as Lionel’s, and

as elegantly dressed. With so much in her own favour, there are young

patricians enough who will care not a rush what her birth;--young

lords--Lady Montfort knows well how fascinating young lords can be!

Courage! before a year is out, you will find new characters written on

the sand.”

“You don’t know Sophy, sir,” said Waife, simply; “and I see you are

resolved not to know her. But you say Arabella Crane is to inquire;

and should the inquiry prove that she is no child of Gabrielle

Desmarets--that she is either your own grandchild or not mine--that--”

“Let me interrupt you. If there be a thing in the world that is cruel

and treacherous, it is a false hope! Crush out of every longing thought

the belief that this poor girl can prove to be one whom, with my

consent, my kinsman can woo to be his wife. Lionel Haughton is the sole

kinsman left to whom I can bequeath this roof-tree--these acres hallowed

to me because associated with my earliest lessons in honour and with the

dreams which directed my life. He must take with the heritage the name

it represents. In his children, that name of Darrell can alone live

still in the land. I say to you, that even were my daughter now in

existence, she would not succeed me--she would not inherit nor

transmit that name. Why?--not because I am incapable of a Christian’s

forgiveness, but because I am not capable of a gentleman’s treason

to his ancestors and himself;--because Matilda Darrell was false and

perfidious; because she was dead to honour, and therefore her birthright

to a heritage of honour was irrevocably forfeited. And since you compel

me to speak rudely, while in you I revere a man above the power of law

to degrade--while, could we pass a generation, and Sophy were your child

by your Lizzy, I should proudly welcome an alliance that made you and me

as brothers--yet I cannot contemplate--it is beyond my power--I cannot

contemplate the picture of Jasper Losely’s daughter, even by my own

child, the Mistress in my father’s home--the bearer of my father’s name.

‘Tis in vain to argue. Grant me the slave of a prejudice--grant these

ideas to be antiquated bigotry--I am too old to change. I ask from

others no sacrifice which I have not borne. And whatever be Lionel’s

grief at my resolve, grief will be my companion long after he has

forgotten that he mourned.”

CHAPTER IX.

POOR SOPHY!

The next morning Mills, in giving Sophy a letter from Lady Montfort,

gave her also one for Waife, and she recognised Lionel Haughton’s

handwriting on the address. She went straight to Waife’s sitting-room,

for the old man had now resumed his early habits, and was up and

dressed. She placed the letter in his hands without a word, and stood

by his side while he opened it, with a certain still firmness in the

expression of her face, as if she were making up her mind to some great

effort. The letter was ostensibly one of congratulation. Lionel had seen

Darrell the day before, after the latter had left the Home Secretary’s

office, and had learned that all which Justice could do to repair the

wrong inflicted had been done. Here Lionel’s words, though brief, were

cordial, and almost joyous; but then came a few sentences steeped in

gloom. There was an allusion, vague and delicate in itself, to the

eventful conversation with Waife in reference to Sophy--a sombre,

solemn farewell conveyed to her and to hope--a passionate prayer for her

happiness--and then an abrupt wrench, as it were, away from a subject

too intolerably painful to prolong--an intimation that he had succeeded

in exchanging into a regiment very shortly to be sent into active

service; that he should set out the next day to join that regiment in

a distant part of the country; and that he trusted, should his life

be spared by war, that it would be many years before he should revisit

England. The sense of the letter was the more affecting in what was

concealed than in what was expressed. Evidently Lionel desired to convey

to Waife, and leave it to him to inform Sophy, that she was henceforth

to regard the writer as vanished out of her existence--departed, as

irrevocably as depart the Dead.

While Waife was reading, he had turned himself aside from Sophy; he had

risen--he had gone to the deep recess of the old mullioned window, half

screening himself beside the curtain. Noiselessly, Sophy followed; and

when he had closed the letter, she laid her hand on his arm, and said

very quietly: “Grandfather, may I read that letter?”

Waife was startled, and replied on the instant, “No, my dear.”

“It is better that I should,” said she, with the same quiet firmness;

and then seeing the distress in his face, she added, with her more

accustomed sweet docility, yet with a forlorn droop of the head: “But as

you please, grandfather.”

Waife hesitated an instant. Was she not right?--would it not be better

to show the letter? After all, she must confront the fact that Lionel

could be nothing to her henceforth; and would not Lionel’s own words

wound her less than all Waife could say? So he put the letter into her

hands, and sate down, watching her countenance.

At the opening sentences of congratulation, she looked up inquiringly.

Poor man, he had not spoken to her of what at another time it would have

been such joy to speak; and he now, in answer to her look, said almost

sadly: “Only about me, Sophy; what does that matter?” But before the

girl read, a line farther, she smiled on him, and tenderly kissed his

furrowed brow.

“Don’t read on, Sophy,” said he quickly. She shook her head and resumed.

His eye still upon her face, he marked it changing as the sense of the

letter grew upon her, till, as, without a word, with scarce a visible

heave of the bosom, she laid the letter on his knees, the change had

become so complete, that it seemed as if ANOTHER stood in her place. In

very young and sensitive persons, especially female (though I have

seen it even in our hard sex), a great and sudden shock or revulsion of

feeling reveals itself thus in the almost preternatural alteration of

the countenance. It is not a mere paleness-a skin-deep loss of colour:

it is as if the whole bloom of youth had rushed away; hollows never

discernible before appear in the cheek that was so round and smooth; the

muscles fall as in mortal illness; a havoc, as of years, seems to have

been wrought in a moment; flame itself does not so suddenly ravage--so

suddenly alter--leave behind it so ineffable an air of desolation and

ruin. Waife sprang forward and clasped her to his breast.

“You will bear it, Sophy! The worst is over now. Fortitude, my

child!--fortitude! The human heart is wonderfully sustained when it

is not the conscience that weighs it down-griefs, that we think at the

moment must kill us, wear themselves away. I speak the truth, for I too

have suffered!”

“Poor grandfather!” said Sophy, gently; and she said no more. But when

he would have continued to speak comfort, or exhort to patience, she

pressed his hand tightly, and laid her finger on her lip. He was hushed

in an instant.

Presently she began to move about the room, busying herself, as usual,

in those slight, scarce perceptible arrangements by which she loved to

think that she ministered to the old man’s simple comforts. She placed

the armchair in his favourite nook by the window, and before it the

footstool for the poor lame foot; and drew the table near the chair,

and looked over the books that George had selected for his perusal from

Darrell’s library; and chose the volume in which she saw his mark,

to place nearest to his hand, and tenderly cleared the mist from his

reading-glass; and removed one or two withered or ailing snowdrops from

the little winter nosegay she had gathered for him the day before--he

watching her all the time, silent as herself, not daring, indeed, to

speak, lest his heart should overflow.

These little tasks of love over, she came towards him a few paces, and

said: “Please, dear grandfather, tell me all about what has happened to

yourself, which should make us glad--that is, by-and-by; but nothing

as to the rest of that letter. I will just think over it by myself; but

never let us talk of it, grandy dear, never more--never more.”

CHAPTER X.

TREES THAT, LIKE THE POPLAR, LIFT UPWARD ALL THEIR BOUGHS, GIVE NO

SHADE AND NO SHELTER, WHATEVER THEIR HEIGHT. TREES THE MOST

LOVINGLY SHELTER AND SHADE US, WHEN, LIKE THE WILLOW, THE HIGHER

SOAR THEIR SUMMITS, THE LOWLIER DROOP THEIR BOUGHS.

Usually when Sophy left Waife in the morning, she would wander out into

the grounds, and he could see her pass before his window; or she would

look into the library, which was almost exclusively given up to the

Morleys, and he could hear her tread on the old creaking stairs. But

now she had stolen into her own room, which communicated with his

sitting-room--a small lobby alone intervening--and there she remained so

long that he grew uneasy. He crept softly to her door and listened. He

had a fineness of hearing almost equal to his son’s; but he could not

hear a sob--not a breath. At length he softly opened the door and looked

in with caution.

The girl was seated at the foot of the bed, quite still--her eyes fixed

on the ground, and her finger to her lip, just as she had placed it

there when imploring silence; so still, it might be even slumber. All

who have grieved respect grief. Waife did not like to approach her; but

he said, from his stand at the threshold: “The sun is quite bright now,

Sophy; go out for a little while, darling.”

She did not look round, she did not stir; but she answered with

readiness, “Yes, presently.”

So he closed the door and left her. An hour passed away; he looked in

again; there she was still--in the same place, in the same attitude.

“Sophy, dear, it is time to take your walk; go--Mrs. Morley is in front,

before my window. I have called to her to wait for you.”

“Yes--presently,” answered Sophy, and she did not move.

Waife was seriously alarmed. He paused a moment-then went back to his

room--took his hat and his staff--came back.

“Sophy, I should like to hobble out and breathe the air; it will do me

good. Will you give me your arm? I am still very weak.”

Sophy now started--shook back her fair curls-rose-put on her bonnet, and

in less than a minute was by the old man’s side. Drawing his arm fondly

into hers, they descend the stairs; they are in the garden; Mrs. Morley

comes to meet them--then George. Wife exerts himself to talk--to be

gay--to protect Sophy’s abstracted silence by his own active, desultory,

erratic humour. Twice or thrice, as he leans on Sophy’s arm, she draws

it still nearer to her, and presses it tenderly. She understands--she

thanks him. Hark! from some undiscovered hiding-place near the

water--Fairthorn’s flute! The music fills the landscape as with a living

presence; the swans pause upon the still lake--the tame doe steals

through yonder leafless trees; and now, musing and slow, from the same

desolate coverts, comes the doe’s master. The music spells them all. Guy

Darrell sees his guests where they have halted by the stone sun-dial.

He advances--joins them--congratulates Waife on his first walk as a

convalescent. He quotes Gray’s well-known verses applicable to that

event, and when, in that voice sweet as the flute itself, he comes to

the lines: [“See the wretch who long has tost,” &c.--GRAY.]

“The common sun, the air, the skies,

To him are opening paradise”

Sophy, as if suddenly struck with remorse at the thought that she,

and she alone, was marring that opening paradise to the old man in his

escape from the sick-room to “the sun, the air, the skies,” abruptly

raised her looks from the ground, and turned them full upon her

guardian’s face, with an attempt at gladness in her quivering smile,

which, whatever its effect on Waife, went straight to the innermost

heart of Guy Darrell. On the instant he recognised, as by intuitive

sympathy, the anguish from which that smile struggled forth--knew that

Sophy had now learned that grief which lay deep within himself--that

grief which makes a sick chamber of the whole external world, and which

greets no more, in the common boons of Nature, the opening Paradise of

recovered Hope! His eye lingered on her face as its smile waned, and

perceived that CHANGE which had so startled Waife. Involuntarily he

moved to her side--involuntarily drew her arm within his own--she thus

supporting the one who cherished--supported by the one who disowned her.

Guy Darrell might be stern in resolves which afflicted others, as he was

stern in afflicting himself; but for others he had at least compassion.

Poor Waife, with nature so different, marked Darrell’s movement, and,

ever ready to seize on comfort, said inly: “He relents. I will not go

to-morrow as I had intended. Sophy must win her way; who can resist

her?”

Talk languished--the wintry sun began to slope--the air grew keen--Waife

was led in--the Morleys went up into his room to keep him company--Sophy

escaped back to her own. Darrell continued his walk, plunging deep into

his maze of beechwoods, followed by the doe. The swans dip their necks

amongst the water-weeds; the flute has ceased, and drearily still is the

grey horizon, seen through the skeleton boughs--seen behind the ragged

sky-line of shaft and parapet in the skeleton palace.

Darrell does not visit Waife’s room that day; he concludes that Waife

and Sophy would wish to be much alone; he dreads renewal of the only

subject on which he has no cheering word to say. Sophy’s smile, Sophy’s

face haunted him. In vain he repeated to himself: “Tut, it will soon

pass--only a girl’s first fancy.”

But Sophy does not come back to Waife’s room when the Morleys have left

it: Waife creeps into her room as before, and, as before, there she sits

still as if in slumber. She comes in, however, of her own accord, to

assist, as usual, in the meal which he takes apart in his room helps

him--helps herself, but eats nothing. She talks, however, almost gaily;

hopes he will be well enough to leave the next day; wonders whether

Sir Isaac has missed them very much; reads to him Lady Montfort’s

affectionate letter to herself; and when dinner is over, and Waife’s

chair drawn to the fireside, she takes her old habitual place on

the stool beside him, and says: “Now, dear grandfather--all about

yourself--what happy thing has chanced to you?”

Alas! poor Waife has but little heart to speak; but he forces himself;

what he has to say may do good to her.

“You know that, on my own account, I had reasons for secresy--change of

name. I shunned all those whom I had ever known in former days; could

take no calling in life by which I might be recognised; deemed it a

blessed mercy of Providence that when, not able to resist offers that

would have enabled me to provide for you as I never otherwise could, I

assented to hazard an engagement at a London theatre--trusting for my

incognito to an actor’s arts of disguise--came the accident which, of

itself, annihilated the temptation into which I had suffered myself to

be led. For, ah, child! had it been known who and what was the William

Waife whose stage-mime tricks moved harmless mirth, or tears as

pleasant, the audience would have risen, not to applaud, but hoot,

‘Off, off,’ from both worlds--the Mimic as the Real! Well, had I been

dishonest, you--you alone felt that I could not have dared to take

you, guiltless infant, by the hand. You remember that, on my return

to Rugge’s wandering theatre, bringing you with me, I exaggerated the

effects of my accident--affected to have lost voice--stipulated to be

spared appearing on his stage. That was not the mere pride of manhood

shrinking from the display of physical afflictions. No. In the first

village that we arrived at, I recognised an old friend, and I saw that,

in spite of time, and the accident that had disfigured me, he recognised

me, and turned away his face, as if in loathing. An old friend,

Sophy--an old friend! Oh, it pierced me to the heart; and I resolved,

from that day, to escape from Rugge’s stage; and I consented till the

means of escape, and some less dependent mode of livelihood, were found,

to live on thy earnings, child; for if I were discovered by other old

friends, and they spoke out, my disgrace would reflect on you; and

better to accept support, from you than that! Alas! appearances were so

strong against me, I never deemed they could be cleared away, even from

the sight of my nearest friends. But Providence, you know, has been so

kind to us hitherto; and so Providence will be kind to us again, Sophy.

And now, the very man I thought most hard to me--this very Guy Darrell,

under whose roof we are--has been the man to make those whose opinion

I most value know that I am not dishonest; and Providence has raised a

witness on my behalf in that very Mr. Hartopp, who judged me (and any

one else might have done the same) too bad to be fit company for you!

And that is why I am congratulated; and, oh, Sophy, though I have borne

it as Heaven does enable us to bear what of ourselves we could not, and

though one learns to shrug a patient shoulder under the obloquy which

may be heaped on us by that crowd of mere strangers to us and to each

other, which is called ‘the WORLD,’ yet to slink out of sight from a

friend, as one more to be shunned than a foe--to take like a coward the

lashings of Scorn--to wince, one raw sore, from the kindness of Pity--to

feel that in life the sole end of each shift and contrivance is to slip

the view--hallo, into a grave without epitaph, by paths as stealthy and

sly as the poor hunted fox, when his last chance--and sole one--is, by

winding and doubling, to run under the earth; to know that it would be

an ungrateful imposture to take chair at the board--at the hearth, of

the man who, unknowing your secret, says, ‘Friend, be social’; accepting

not a crust that one does not pay for, lest one feel a swindler to the

kind fellow-creature whose equal we must not be!--all this--all this,

Sophy, did at times chafe and gall more than I ought to have let it do,

considering that there was ONE who saw it all, and would--Don’t cry,

Sophy; it is all over now.”

“Not cry! Oh, it does me so much good.”

“All over now! I am under this roof--without shame or scruple; and if

Guy Darrell, knowing all my past, has proved my innocence in the eyes

of those whom alone I cared for, I feel as if I had the right to stand

before any crowd of men erect and shameless--a Man once more with Men!

Oh, darling! let me but see thy old happy smile again! The happy

smiles of the young are the sunshine of the old. Be patient--be firm;

Providence is so very kind, Sophy.”

CHAPTER XI.

WAIFE EXACTS FROM GEORGE MORLEY THE FULFILMENT OF ONE OF THOSE

PROMISES WHICH MEAN NOTHING OR EVERYTHING.

The next day George Morley visited Waife’s room earlier than usual.

Waife had sent for him. Sophy was seated by her grandfather--his hand in

hers. She had been exerting herself to the utmost to talk cheerfully--to

shake from her aspect every cloud of sorrow. But still THAT CHANGE was

there--more marked than even on the previous day. A few hours of intense

struggle, a single night wholly without sleep, will tell on the face

of early youth. Not till we, hard veterans, have gone through such

struggles as life permits not to the slight responsibilities of new

recruits--not till sleepless nights have grown to us familiar will

Thought seem to take, as it were, strength, not exhaustion, from

unrelaxing exercise--nourish the brain, sustain the form by its own

untiring, fleshless, spiritual immortality; not till many a winter has

stripped the leaves; not till deep, and far out of sight, spread the

roots that support the stem--will the beat of the east wind leave no

sign on the rind.

George has not, indeed, so noticed, the day before, the kind of

withering blight that has passed over the girl’s countenance; but he did

now--when she met his eye more steadfastly, and had resumed something of

the open genial infantine grace of manner which constituted her peculiar

charm, and which it was difficult to associate with deeper griefs than

those of childhood.

“You must scold my grandfather,” she said. “He chooses to fancy that

he is not well enough yet to leave; and I am sure that he is, and will

recover more quickly at home than here.”

“Pooh!” said Waife; “you young things suppose we old folks can be as

brisk as yourselves; but if I am to be scolded, leave Mr. George unawed

by your presence, and go out, my dear, while the sun lasts: I know by

the ways of that blackbird that the day will be overcast by noon.”

As soon as they were alone, George said abruptly: “Your Sophy is looking

very ill, and if you are well enough to leave, it might be better

for her to move from this gloomy house. Movement itself is a great

restorative,” added George, with emphasis.

“You see, then, that she looks ill--very ill,” said Waife deliberately;

“and there is that in your manner which tells me you guess the cause.”

“I do guess it from the glimpse which I caught of Lionel’s face after he

had been closeted a short time with Mr. Darrell at my uncle’s house two

days ago. I guess it also from a letter I have received from my uncle.”

“You guess right--very right,” said Waife, still with the same serious,

tranquil manner. “I showed her this letter from young Haughton. Read

it.” George hurried his eye over the letter, and returned it silently.

Waife proceeded:

“I was frightened yesterday by the strange composure she showed. In

her face alone could be read what she suffered. We talked last night.

I spoke of myself--of my old sorrows--in order to give her strength to

support hers; and the girl has a heroic nature, Mr. George--and she is

resolved to conquer or to die. But she will not conquer.” George began

the usual strain of a consoles in such trials. Waife stopped him. “All

that you can say, Mr. George, I know beforehand; and she will need no

exhortation to prayer and to fortitude. I stole from my room when it was

almost dawn. I saw a light under the door of her chamber. I just looked

in--softly--unperceived. She had not gone to bed. She was by the open

window--stars dying out of the sky--kneeling on the floor, her face

buried in her hands. She has prayed. In her soul, at this moment, be

sure that she is praying now. She will devote herself to me--she will be

cheerful--you will hear her laugh, Mr. George; but she will not conquer

in this world; long before the new year is out, she will be looking

down upon our grief with her bright smile; but we shall not see her, Mr.

George. Do not think this is an old man’s foolish terror; I know sorrow

as physicians know disease; it has its mortal symptoms. Hush! hear me

out. I have one hope--it is in you.”

“In me?”

“Yes. Do you remember that you said, if I could succeed in opening to

your intellect its fair career, you would be the best friend to me man

ever had? and I said, ‘Agreed, but change the party in the contract;

befriend my Sophy instead of me, and if ever I ask you, help me in aught

for her welfare and happiness;’ and you said, ‘With heart and soul.’

That was the bargain, Mr. George. Now you have all that you then

despaired of; you have the dignity of your sacred calling--you have the

eloquence of the preacher. I cannot cope with Mr. Darrell--you can. He

has a heart--it can be softened; he has a soul--it can be freed from the

wither that tether it down; he has the virtues you can appeal to; and

he has the pride which you, as a Christian minister, have the right to

prove to be a sin. I cannot argue with him; I cannot reprove the man to

whom I owe so much. All ranks of men and of mind should be equal to you,

the pastor, the divine. You ministers of the gospel address yourselves

unabashed to the poor, the humble, the uninstructed. Did Heaven give you

power and commandment over these alone? Go, Preacher! go! Speak with the

same authority to the great, to the haughty, to the wise!” The old man’s

look and gesture were sublime.

The Preacher felt a thrill vibrate from his ear to his heart; but his

reason was less affected than his heart. He shook his head mournfully.

The task thus assigned to him was beyond the limits which custom

prescribes to the priest of the English Church;--dictation to a man not

even of his own flock, upon the closest affairs of that man’s private

hearth and home! Our society allows no such privilege; and our society

is right.

Waife, watching his countenance, saw at once what was passing in his

mind, and resumed, as if answering George’s own thought:

“Ay, if you were but the commonplace priest! But, you are something

more; you are the priest specially endowed for all special purposes of

good. You have the mind to reason--the tongue to persuade--the majestic

earnestness of impassioned zeal. Nor are you here the priest alone; you

are here the friend, the confidant, of all for whom you may exert your

powers. Oh, George Morley, I am a poor ignorant blunderer when presuming

to exhort you as Christian minister; but in your own words--I address

you as man and gentleman, you declared that ‘thought and zeal should not

stammer whenever I said, Keep your promise.’ I say it now--Keep faith to

the child you swore to me to befriend!”

“I will go-and at once,” said George, rising. “But be not sanguine.

I see not a chance of success. A man so superior to myself in years,

station, abilities, repute!”

“Where would be Christianity,” said Waife, “if the earliest preachers

had raised such questions? There is a soldier’s courage--is there not a

priest’s?”

George made no answer, but, with abstracted eye, gathered brow, and

slow, meditative step, quitted the room, and sought Guy Darrell.

BOOK XII.

CHAPTER I.

THE MAN OF THE WORLD SHOWS MORE INDIFFERENCE TO THE THINGS AND

DOCTRINES OF THE WORLD THAN MIGHT BE SUPPOSED.--BUT HE VINDICATES

HIS CHARACTER, WHICH MIGHT OTHERWISE BE JEOPARDISED, BY THE

ADROITNESS WITH WHICH, HAVING RESOLVED TO ROAST CHESTNUTS IN THE

ASHES OF ANOTHER MAN’S HEARTH, HE HANDLES THEM WHEN HOTTEST BY THE

PROXY OF A--CAT’S PAW.

In the letter which George told Waife he had received from his uncle,

George had an excuse for the delicate and arduous mission he undertook,

which he did not confide to the old man, lest it should convey more

hopes than its nature justified. In this letter, Alban related, with a

degree of feeling that he rarely manifested, his farewell conversation

with Lionel, who had just departed to join his new regiment. The poor

young man had buoyed himself up with delighted expectations of the

result of Sophy’s prolonged residence under Darrell’s roof; he had

persuaded his reason that when Darrell had been thus enabled to see and

judge of her for himself, he would be irresistibly attracted towards

her; that Innocence, like Truth, would be mighty and prevail; Darrell

was engaged in the attempt to clear William Losely’s name and blood from

the taint of felony;--Alban was commissioned to negotiate with Jasper

Losely on any terms that would remove all chance of future disgrace

from that quarter. Oh yes! to poor Lionel’s eyes obstacles vanished--the

future became clear. And thus, when, after telling him of his final

interview with the Minister, Darrell said, “I trust that, in bringing

to William Losely this intelligence, I shall at least soften his

disappointment, when I make it thoroughly clear to him how impossible it

is that his Sophy can ever be more to me--to us--than a stranger whose

virtues create an interest in her welfare”--Lionel was stunned as by a

blow. Scarcely could he murmur:

“You have seen her--and your resolve remains the same.”

“Can you doubt it?” answered Darrell, as if in surprise. “The resolve

may now give me pain on my account, as before it gave me pain on yours.

But if not moved by your pain, can I be moved by mine? That would be a

baseness.” The Colonel, in depicting Lionel’s state of mind after

the young soldier had written his farewell to Waife, and previous to

quitting London, expressed very gloomy forebodings. “I do not say,”

wrote he, “that Lionel will guiltily seek death in the field, nor does

death there come more to those who seek than to those who shun it;

but he will go upon a service exposed to more than ordinary suffering,

privation, and disease--without that rallying power of hope--that Will,

and Desire to Live, which constitute the true stamina of Youth. And

I have always set a black mark upon those who go into war joyless and

despondent. Send a young fellow to the camp with his spirits broken, his

heart heavy as a lump of lead, and the first of those epidemics, which

thin ranks more than the cannon, says to itself, ‘There is a man

for me!’ Any doctor will tell you that, even at home, the gay and

light-hearted walk safe through the pestilence, which settles on the

moping as malaria settles on a marsh. Confound Guy Darrell’s ancestors,

they have spoilt Queen Victoria as good a young soldier as ever wore

a sword by his side! Six months ago, and how blithely Lionel Haughton

looked forth to the future!--all laurel!--no cypress! And now I feel as

if I had shaken hands with a victim sacrificed by Superstition to

the tombs of the dead. I cannot blame Darrell: I dare say in the same

position I might do the same. But no; on second thoughts, I should not.

If Darrell does not choose to marry and have sons of his own, he has no

right to load a poor boy with benefits, and say: ‘There is but one way

to prove your gratitude; remember my ancestors, and be miserable for the

rest of your days!’ Darrell, forsooth, intends to leave to Lionel the

transmission of the old Darrell name; and the old Darrell name must

not be tarnished by the marriage on which Lionel has unluckily set his

heart! I respect the old name; but it is not like the House of Vipont--a

British Institution. And if some democratical cholera, which does not

care a rush for old names, carries off Lionel, what becomes of the old

name then? Lionel is not Darrell’s son; Lionel need not perforce take

the old name. Let the young man live as Lionel Haughton, and the old

name die with Guy Darrell!

“As to the poor girl’s birth and parentage, I believe we shall never

know them. I quite agree with Darrell that it will be wisest never to

inquire. But I dismiss, as farfetched and improbable, his supposition

that she is Gabrielle Desmaret’s daughter. To me it is infinitely more

likely, either that the deposition of the nurse, which poor Willy gave

to Darrell, and which Darrell showed to me, is true (only that Jasper

was conniving at the temporary suspension of his child’s existence while

it suited his purpose)--or that, at the worst, this mysterious young

lady is the daughter of the artiste. In the former supposition, as I

have said over and over again, a marriage between Lionel and Sophy

is precisely that which Darrell should desire; in the latter case, of

course, if Lionel were the head of the House of Vipont, the idea of such

an union would be inadmissible. But Lionel, _entre nous_, is the son of

a ruined spendthrift by a linen-draper’s daughter. And Darrell has but

to give the handsome young couple five or six thousand a year, and I

know the world well enough to know that the world will trouble itself

very little about their pedigrees. And really Lionel should be left

wholly free to choose whether he prefer a girl whom he loves with his

whole heart, five or six thousand a year, happiness, and the chance of

honours in a glorious profession to which he will then look with

glad spirits--or a life-long misery, with the right, after Darrell’s

death--that I hope will not be these thirty years--to bear the name of

Darrell instead of Haughton; which, if I were the last of the Haughtons,

and had any family pride--as, thank Heaven I have not--would be a

painful exchange to me; and dearly bought by the addition of some

additional thousands a year, when I had grown perhaps as little disposed

to spend them as Guy Darrell himself is. But, after all, there is one

I compassionate even more than young Haughton. My morning rides of late

have been much in the direction of Twickenham, visiting our fair cousin

Lady Montfort. I went first to lecture her for letting these young

people see so much of each other. But my anger melted into admiration

and sympathy when I found with what tender, exquisite, matchless

friendship she had been all the while scheming for Darrell’s happiness;

and with what remorse she now contemplated the sorrow which a friendship

so grateful, and a belief so natural, had innocently occasioned. That

remorse is wearing her to death. Dr. F------, who attended poor dear

Willy, is also attending her; and he told me privately that his

skill was in vain--that her case baffled him; and he had very serious

apprehensions. Darrell owes some consideration to such a friend. And to

think that here are lives permanently embittered, if not risked, by the

ruthless obstinacy of the best-hearted man I ever met! Now, though I

have already intimated my opinions to Darrell with a candour due to the

oldest and dearest of my friends, yet I have never, of course, in the

letters I have written to him or the talk we have had together, spoken

out so plainly as I do in writing to you. And having thus written,

without awe of his grey eye and dark brow, I have half as mind to add

‘seize him in a happy moment and show him this letter.’ Yes, I give you

full leave; show it to him if you think it would avail. If not, throw

it into the fire, and--pray Heaven for those whom we poor mortals cannot

serve.”

On the envelope Alban had added these words: “But of course, before

showing the enclosed, you will prepare Darrell’s mind to weigh its

contents.” And probably it was in that curt and simple injunction that

the subtle man of the world evinced the astuteness of which not a trace

was apparent in the body of his letter.

Though Alban’s communication had much excited his nephew, yet George had

not judged it discreet to avail himself of the permission to show it

to Darrell. It seemed to him that the pride of his host would take much

more offence at its transmission through the hands of a third person

than at the frank tone of its reasonings and suggestions. And George

had determined to re-enclose it to the Colonel, urging him to forward it

himself to Darrell just as it was, with but a brief line to say, “that,

on reflection, Alban submitted direct to his old school-fellow the

reasonings and apprehensions which he had so unreservedly poured forth

in a letter commenced without the intention at which the writer arrived

at the close.” But now that the preacher had undertaken the duty of an

advocate, the letter became his brief.

George passed through the library, through the study, up the narrow

stair that finally conducted to the same lofty cell in which Darrell

had confronted the midnight robber who claimed a child in Sophy. With a

nervous hand George knocked at the door.

Unaccustomed to any intrusion on the part of guest or household in that

solitary retreat, somewhat sharply, as if in anger, Darrell’s voice

answered the knock.

“Who’s there?”

“George Morley.”

Darrell opened the door.

CHAPTER II.

“A GOOD ARCHER IS NOT KNOWN BY HIS ARROWS, BUT HIS AIM.” “A GOOD

MAN IS NO MORE TO BE FEARED THAN A SHEEP.” “A GOOD SURGEON MUST

HAVE AN EAGLE’S EYE, A LION’S HEART, AND A LADY’S HAND.” “A GOOD

TONGUE IS A GOOD WEAPON.” AND DESPITE THOSE SUGGESTIVE OR

ENCOURAGING PROVERBS, GEORGE MORLEY HAS UNDERTAKEN SOMETHING SO

OPPOSED TO ALL PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY THAT IT BECOMES A GRAVE

QUESTION WHAT HE WILL DO WITH IT.

“I come,” said George, “to ask you one of the greatest favours a man can

confer upon another; it will take some little time to explain. Are you

at leisure?”

Darrell’s brow relaxed.

“Seat yourself in comfort, my dear George. If it be in my power to serve

or to gratify Alban Morley’s nephew, it is I who receive a favour.”

Darrell thought to himself--“The young man is ambitious--I may aid in

his path towards a See!”

GEORGE MORLEY.--“First let me say that I would consult your intellect

on a matter which habitually attracts and engages mine--that old vexed

question of the origin and uses of Evil, not only in the physical, but

the moral world; it involves problems over which I would ponder for

hours as a boy--on which I wrote essays as a schoolman--on which I

perpetually collect illustrations to fortify my views as a theologian.”

“He is writing a book,” thought Darrell, enviously; “and a book on such

a subject will last him all his life. Happy man!”

GEORGE MORLEY.--“The Pastor, you know, is frequently consulted by the

suffering and oppressed; frequently called upon to answer that question

in which the scepticism of the humble and the ignorant ordinarily

begins: ‘Why am I suffering? Why am I oppressed? Is this the justice of

Providence? Has the Great Father that benign pity, that watchful care

for His children, which you preachers tell us?’ Ever intent on deducing

examples from the lives to which the clue has become apparent, must

be the Priest who has to reason with Affliction caused by no apparent

fault; and where, judged by the Canons of Human justice, cloud and

darkness obscure the Divine--still to ‘vindicate the ways of God to

man.’”

DARRELL.--“A philosophy that preceded, and will outlive, all other

schools. It is twin-born with the world itself. Go on; though the theme

be inexhaustible, its interest never flags.”

GEORGE MORLEY.--“Has it struck you, Mr. Darrell, that few lives have

ever passed under your survey; in which the inexpressible tenderness of

the Omniscient has been more visibly clear than in that of your guest,

William Losely?”

DARRELL (surprised).--“Clear? To me, I confess that if ever there were

an instance in which the Divine tenderness, the Divine justice, which I

can never presume to doubt, was yet undiscernible to my bounded vision,

it is in the instance of the very life you refer to. I see a man of

admirable virtues--of a childlike simplicity of character, which makes

him almost unconscious of the grandeur of his own soul--involved by

a sublime self-sacrifice--by a virtue, not by a fault--in the most

dreadful of human calamities--ignominious degradation;--hurled in the

midday of life from the sphere of honest men--a felon’s brand on his

name--a vagrant in his age; justice at last, but tardy and niggard, and

giving him but little joy when it arrives; because, ever thinking only

of others, his heart is wrapped in a child whom he cannot make happy in

the way in which his hopes have been set!--George-no, your illustration

might be turned by a sceptic into an argument against you.”

GEORGE MORLEY.--“Not unless the sceptic refused the elementary

starting-ground from which you and I may reason; not if it be granted

that man has a soul, which it is the object of this life to enrich

and develop for another. We know from my uncle what William Losely was

before this calamity befell him--a genial boon-companion--a careless,

frank, ‘good fellow’--all the virtues you now praise in him dormant,

unguessed even by himself. Suddenly came CALAMITY!--suddenly arose the

SOUL! Degradation of name, and with it dignity of nature! How poor, how

slight, how insignificant William Losely the hanger-on of rural Thanes

compared with that William Waife whose entrance into this house,

you--despite that felon’s brand when you knew it was the martyr’s

glory,--greeted with noble reverence; whom, when the mind itself was

stricken down--only the soul left to the wreck of the body--you tended

with such pious care as he lay on--your father’s bed! And do you, who

hold Nobleness in such honour--do you, of all men, tell me that you

cannot recognise that Celestial tenderness which ennobled a Spirit for

all Eternity?”

“George, you are right,” cried Darrell; “and I was a blockhead and

blunderer, as man always is when he mistakes a speck in his telescope

for a blotch in the sun of a system.”

GEORGE MORLEY.--“But more difficult it is to recognise the mysterious

agencies of Heavenly Love when no great worldly adversity forces us

to pause and question. Let Fortune strike down a victim, and even the

heathen cries, ‘This is the hand of God!’ But where Fortune brings no

vicissitude; where her wheel runs smooth, dropping wealth or honours

as it rolls--where Affliction centres its work within the secret,

unrevealing heart--there, even the wisest man may not readily perceive

by what means Heaven is admonishing, forcing, or wooing him nearer to

itself. I take the case of a man in whom Heaven acknowledges a favoured

son. I assume his outward life crowned with successes, his mind stored

with opulent gifts, his nature endowed with lofty virtues; what an heir

to train through the brief school of earth for due place in the ages

that roll on for ever! But this man has a parasite weed in each bed of

a soul rich in flowers;--weed and flowers intertwined, stem with

stem--their fibres uniting even deep down to the root.

“Can you not conceive with what untiring vigilant care Heaven will seek

to disentangle the flower from the weed?--how (let me drop inadequate

metaphor)--how Heaven will select for its warning chastisements that

very error which the man has so blent with his virtues that he holds it

a virtue itself?--how, gradually, slowly, pertinaciously, it will gather

this beautiful nature all to itself--insist on a sacrifice it will

ask from no other? To complete the true nature of poor William Losely,

Heaven ordained the sacrifice of worldly repute; to complete the true

nature of Guy Darrell, God ordains him the sacrifice of PRIDE!”

Darrell started-half rose; his eye flashed-his cheek paled; but he

remained silent.

“I have approached the favour I supplicate,” resumed George, drawing a

deep breath, as of relief. “Greater favour man can scarcely bestow

upon his fellow. I entreat you to believe that I respect, and love,

and honour you sufficiently to be for a while so lifted up into your

friendship that I may claim the privilege, without which friendship

is but a form;--just as no freedom is more obnoxious than intrusion

on confidence withheld, so no favour, I repeat, more precious than the

confidence which a man of worth vouchsafes to him who invites it with no

claim but the loyalty of his motives.”

Said Darrell, softened, but with stateliness: “All human lives are as

separate circles; they may touch at one point in friendly approach, but,

even where they touch, each rounds itself from off the other. With this

hint I am contented to ask at what point in my circle you would touch?”

GEORGE MORLEY.--“I thank you gratefully; I accept your illustration.

The point is touched; I need no other.” He paused a moment, as if

concentrating all his thoughts, and then said, with musing accents:

“Yes, I accept your illustration; I will even strengthen the force of

the truth implied in it by a more homely illustration of my own. There

are small skeleton abridgments of history which we give to children.

In such a year a king was crowned--a battle was fought; there was

some great disaster, or some great triumph. Of the true progress and

development of the nation whose record is thus epitomised--of the

complicated causes which lead to these salient events--of the animated,

varied multitudinous life which has been hurrying on from epoch to

epoch, the abridgment tells nothing. It is so with the life of each

individual man: the life as it stands before us is but a sterile

epitome--hid from our sight the EMOTIONS which are the People of the

Heart. In such a year occurred a visible something--a gain--a loss--a

success--a disappointment; the People of the Heart crowned or deposed

a King. This is all we know; and the most voluminous biography

ever written must still be a meagre abridgment of all that really

individualised and formed a man. I ask not your confidence in a single

detail or fact in your existence which lies beyond my sight. Far from me

so curious an insolence; but I do ask you this: Reflecting on your past

life as a whole, have not your chief sorrows had a common idiosyncrasy?

Have they not been strangely directed towards the frustration of some

one single object--cherished by your earliest hopes, and, as if in

defiance of fate, resolutely clung to even now?”

“It is true,” muttered Darrell. “You do not offend me; go on!”

“And have not these SORROWS, in frustrating your object, often assumed,

too, a certain uniformity in the weapons they use, in the quarter they

harass or invade, almost as if it were a strategic policy that guided

them where they could most pain, or humble, or eject a FOE that they

were ordered to storm? Degrade you they could not; such was not their

mission. Heaven left you intact a kingliness of nature--a loftiness of

spirit, unabased by assaults levelled not against yourself, but your

pride; your personal dignity, though singularly sensitive, though

bitterly galled, stood proof. What might lower lesser men, lowered

not you; Heaven left you that dignity, for it belongs alike to your

intellect and your virtues--but suffered it to be a source of your

anguish. Why? Because, not content with adorning your virtues, it

was covering the fault against which were directed the sorrows. You

frown--forgive me.”

“You do not transgress, unless it be as a flatterer! If I frowned, it

was unconsciously--the sign of thought, not anger. Pause!--my mind has

left you for a moment; it is looking into the past.”

The past!--Was it not true? That home to whose porch came in time the

Black Horses, in time just to save from the last worst dishonour, but

not save from years racked by each pang that can harrow man’s dignity

in each daily assault on the fort of man’s pride; the sly treacherous

daughter--her terrible marriage--the man whose disgrace she had linked

to her blood, and whose life was still insult and threat to his own.

True, what a war upon Pride! And even in that secret and fatal love

which had been of all his griefs the most influential and enduring, had

his pride been less bitterly wounded, and that pride less enthroned in

his being, would his grief have been so relentless, his attempts at

its conquest so vain? And then, even now--what was it said, “I can

bless?”--holy LOVE! What was it said, “but not pardon”?--stern PRIDE!

And so onto these last revolutions of sterile life. Was he not miserable

in Lionel’s and Sophy’s misery? Forlorn in that Citadel of Pride--closed

round and invested with Sorrows--and the last hopes that had fled to the

fortress, slain in defence of its outworks. With hand shading his face,

Darrell remained some minutes silent. At last he raised his head, and

his eye was steadfast, his lip firm.

“George Morley,” said he, “I acknowledge much justice in the censure you

have conveyed, with so artful a delicacy that, if it fail to reform, it

cannot displease, and leaves much to be seriously revolved in solitary

self-commune. But though I may own that pride is not made for man, and

that in the blindness of human judgment I may often have confounded

pride with duty, and suffered for the mistake, yet that one prevailing

object of my life, which with so startling a truth you say it has

pleased Heaven to frustrate, I cannot hold an error in itself. You have

learned enough from your uncle, seen enough of me yourself, to know what

that object has been. You are scholar enough to concede to me that it

is no ignoble homage which either nations or persons render to the

ancestral Dead--that homage is an instinct in all but vulgar and sordid

natures. Has a man no ancestry of his own--rightly and justly, if

himself of worth, he appropriates to his lineage all the heroes, and

bards, and patriots of his fatherland! A free citizen has ancestors

in all the glorious chiefs that have adorned the State, on the sole

condition that he shall revere their tombs and guard their memory as

a son! And thus, whenever they who speak trumpet-tongued to grand

democracies would rouse some quailing generation to heroic deed or

sacrifice, they appeal in the Name of Ancestors, and call upon the

living to be worthy of the dead! That which is so laudable--nay, so

necessary a sentiment in the mass, cannot be a fault that angers Heaven

in the man. Like all high sentiments, it may compel harsh and rugged

duties; it may need the stern suppression of many a gentle impulse--of

many a pleasing wish. But we must regard it in its merit and consistency

as a whole. And if, my eloquent and subtle friend, all you have hitherto

said be designed but to wind into pleas for the same cause that I have

already decided against the advocate in my own heart which sides with

Lionel’s generous love and yon fair girl’s ingenuous and touching grace,

let us break up the court; the judge has no choice but the law which

imperiously governs his judgment.”

GEORGE MORLEY.--“I have not hitherto presumed to apply to particular

cases the general argument you so indulgently allow me to urge in

favour of my theory, that in the world of the human heart, when closely

examined, there is the same harmony of design as in the external

universe; that in Fault and in Sorrow are the axioms, and problems, and

postulates of a SCIENCE. Bear with me a little longer if I still pursue

the same course of reasoning. I shall not have the arrogance to argue a

special instance--to say, ‘This you should do, this you should not do.’

All I would ask is, leave to proffer a few more suggestions to your own

large and candid experience.”

Said Darrell, irresistibly allured on, but with a tinge of his grave

irony: “You have the true genius of the pulpit, and I concede to you its

rights. I will listen with the wish to profit--the more susceptible of

conviction because freed from the necessity to reply.”

GEORGE MORLEY.--“You vindicate the object which has been the main

ambition of your life. You say ‘not an ignoble object.’ Truly! ignoble

objects are not for you. The question is, are there not objects nobler,

which should have attained higher value, and led to larger results in

the soul which Providence assigned to you; was not the proper place of

the object you vindicate that of an auxiliary--a subordinate, rather

than that of the all-directing, self-sufficing leader and autocrat

of such various powers of mind? I picture you to myself--a lone,

bold-hearted boy--in this ancient hall, amidst these primitive

landscapes, in which old associations are so little disturbed by the

modern--in which the wild turf of waste lands, vanishing deep into mazes

of solemn wood, lends the scene to dreams of gone days--brings Adventure

and Knighthood, and all the poetical colours of Old, to unite the homage

due to the ancestral dead with the future ambition of life;--Image full

of interest and of pathos--a friendless child of a race more beloved

for its decay, looking dauntless on to poverty and toil, with that

conviction of power which is born of collected purpose and earnest will;

and recording his secret vow that singlehanded he will undo the work

of destroying ages, and restore his line to its place of honour in the

land!”

George paused, and tears stood in Darrell’s eyes.

“Yes,” resumed the scholar--“yes, for the child, for the youth, for

the man in his first daring stride into the Action of Life, that object

commands our respectful sympathies.

“But wait a few years. Has that object expanded? Has it led on into

objects embracing humanity? Remains it alone and sterile in the bosom of

successful genius? Or is it prolific and fruitful of grander designs--of

more widespreading uses? Make genius successful, and all men have the

right to say, ‘Brother, help us!’ What! no other object still but to

build up a house!--to recover a line! What was grand at one stage of an

onward career, is narrow and small at another! Ambition limited to the

rise of a family!

“Can our sympathies still hallow that? No! In Guy Darrell

successful--that ambition was treason to earth! Mankind was his family

now! THEREFORE Heaven thwarted the object which opposed its own ends

in creating you! THERFORE childless you stand on your desolate hearth!

THEREFORE, lo! side by side--yon uncompleted pile--your own uncompleted

life!”

Darrell sat dumb.--He was appalled!

GEORGE MORLEY.--“Has not that object stinted your very intellect? Has it

not, while baffled in its own centred aim--has it not robbed you of the

glory which youth craved, and which manhood might have won? Idolater

to the creed of an Ancestor’s NAME, has your own name that hold on the

grateful respect of the Future, which men ever give to that genius whose

objects are knit with mankind? Suddenly, in the zenith of life, amidst

cheers, not of genuine renown,--cheers loud and brief as a mob’s

hurrah--calamities, all of which I know not, nor conjecture, interrupt

your career;--and when your own life-long object is arrested, or rather

when it is snatched from your eye, your genius renounces all uses. Fame,

ever-during, was before you still, had your objects been those for which

genius is given. You muse. Heaven permits these rude words to strike

home! Guy Darrell, it is not too late! Heaven’s warnings are always in

time. Reflect, with the one narrow object was fostered and fed the one

master failing of Pride. To us as Christians, or as reasoners, it is not

in this world that every duty is to find its special meed; yet by that

same mystical LAW which makes Science of Sorrow, rewards are but often

the normal effect of duties sublimely fulfilled. Out of your pride and

your one-cherished object, has there grown happiness? Has the success

which was not denied you achieved the link with posterity that your

hand, if not fettered, would long since have forged? Grant that Heaven

says ‘Stubborn child, yield at last to the warnings vouchsafed to thee

by my love! From a son so favoured and strong I exact the most difficult

offering! Thou hast sacrificed much, but for ends not prescribed in my

law; sacrifice now to me the thing thou most clingest to--Pride. I make

the pang I demand purposely bitter. I twine round the offering I ask the

fibres that bleed in relaxing. What to other men would be no duty, is

duty to thee, because it entails a triumphant self-conquest, and pays

to Humanity the arrears of just dues long neglected.’ Grant the hard

sacrifice made; I must think Heaven has ends for your joy even here,

when it asks you to part with the cause of your sorrows;--I must think

that your evening of life may have sunshine denied to its noon. But with

God are no bargains. A virtue, the most arduous because it must trample

down what your life has exalted as virtue, is before you; distasteful,

austere, repellant. The most inviting arguments in its favour are, that

it proffers no bribes; men would acquit you in rejecting it; judged by

our world’s ordinary rule, men would be right in acquitting you. But if

on reflection you say in your heart of hearts, ‘This is a virtue,’ you

will follow its noiseless path up to the smile of God!”

The preacher ceased.

Darrell breathed a long sigh, rose slowly, took George’s hand, pressed

it warmly in both his own, and turned quickly and silently away. He

paused in the deep recess where the gleam of the wintry sun shot through

the small casement, aslant and pale on the massive wall: opening the

lattice he looked forth on the old hereditary trees--on the Gothic

church-tower--on the dark evergreens that belted his father’s tomb.

Again he sighed, but this time the sigh had a haughty sound in its

abrupt impatience; and George felt that words written must remain to

strengthen and confirm the effect of words spoken. He had at least

obeyed his uncle’s wise injunction--he had prepared Darrell’s mind to

weigh the contents of a letter, which, given in the first instance,

would perhaps have rendered Darrell’s resolution not less stubborn, by

increasing the pain to himself which the resolution already inflicted.

Darrell turned and looked towards George, as if in surprise to see him

still lingering there.

“I have now but to place before you this letter from my uncle to myself;

it enters into those details which it would have ill become me specially

to discuss. Remember, I entreat you, in reading it, that it is written

by your oldest friend--by a man who has no dull discrimination in the

perplexities of life or the niceties of honour.”

Darrell bowed his head in assent, and took the letter. George was about

to leave the room.

“Stay,” said Darrell, “‘tis best to have but one interview--one

conversation on the subject which has been just enforced on me; and

the letter may need a comment or a message to your uncle.” He stood

hesitating, with the letter open in his hand; and, fixing his keen eye

on George’s pale and powerful countenance, said: “How is it that, with

an experience of mankind which you will pardon me for assuming to be

limited, you yet read so wondrously the complicated human heart?”

“If I really have that gift,” said George, “I will answer your question

by another: Is it through experience that we learn to read the human

heart--or is it through sympathy? If it be experience, what becomes of

the Poet? If the Poet be born, not made, is it not because he is born to

sympathise with what he has never experienced?”

“I see! There are born Preachers!”

Darrell reseated himself, and began Alban’s letter. He was evidently

moved by the Colonel’s account of Lionel’s grief, muttering to himself,

“Poor boy!--but he is brave--he is young.” When he came to Alban’s

forebodings on the effects of dejection upon the stamina of life, he

pressed his hand quickly against his breast as if he had received a

shock! He mused a while before he resumed his task; then he read rapidly

and silently till his face flushed, and he repeated in a hollow tone,

inexpressibly mournful: “Let the young man live, and the old name die

with Guy Darrell. Ay, ay! see how the world sides with Youth! What

matters all else so that Youth have its toy!” Again his eye hurried on

impatiently till he came to the passage devoted to Lady Montfort; then

George saw that the paper trembled violently in his hand and that his

very lips grew white. “‘Serious apprehensions,’” he muttered. “I owe

‘consideration to such a friend.’ This man is without a heart!”

He clenched the paper in his hand without reading farther. “Leave me

this letter, George; I will give an answer to that and to you before

night.” He caught up his hat as he spoke, passed into the lifeless

picture-gallery, and so out into the open air. George, dubious and

anxious, gained the solitude of his own room, and locked the door.

CHAPTER III.

AT LAST THE GREAT QUESTION BY TORTURE IS FAIRLY APPLIED TO GUY

DARRELL.

WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT? What will Guy Darrell do with the thought

that weighs on his brain, rankles in his heart, perplexes his dubious

conscience? What will he do with the Law which has governed his past

life? What will he do with that shadow of A NAME which, alike in

swarming crowds or in lonely burial-places, has spelled his eye and

lured his step as a beckoning ghost? What will he do with the PRIDE from

which the mask has been so rudely torn? What will he do with idols so

long revered? Are they idols, or are they but symbols and images of holy

truths? What will he do with the torturing problem, on the solution of

which depend the honour due to consecrated ashes, and the rights due to

beating hearts? There, restless he goes, the arrow of that question in

his side--now through the broad waste lands--now through the dim woods,

pausing oft with short quick sigh, with hand swept across his brow as

if to clear away a cloud;--now snatched from our sight by the evergreens

round the tomb in that still churchyard--now emerging slow, with

melancholy eyes fixed on the old roof-tree! What will he do with it? The

Question of Questions, in which all Futurity is opened, has him on its

rack. WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT? Let us see.

CHAPTER IV.

Immunis aram si tetigit manus,

Non sumptuosa blandior hostia,

Mollivit aversas Penates,

Farre pio et saliente mica.--HORAT.

It is the grey of the evening. Fairthorn is sauntering somewhat sullenly

along the banks of the lake. He has missed, the last three days, his

walk with Sophy--missed the pleasing excitement of talking at her, and

of the family in whose obsolete glories he considers her very interest

an obtrusive impertinence. He has missed, too, his more habitual and

less irritating conversation with Darrell. In short, altogether he is

put out, and he vents his spleen on the swans, who follow him along the

wave as he walks along the margin, intimating either their affection for

himself, or their anticipation of the bread-crumbs associated with his

image--by the amiable note, half snort and half grunt, to which change

of time or climate has reduced the vocal accomplishments of those

classical birds, so pathetically melodious in the age of Moschus and on

the banks of Cayster.

“Not a crumb, you unprincipled beggars,” growled the musician. “You

imagine that mankind are to have no other thought but that of supplying

you with luxuries! And if you were asked, in a competitive examination,

to define ME, your benefactor, you would say: ‘A thing very low in the

scale of creation, without wings or even feathers, but which Providence

endowed with a peculiar instinct for affording nutritious and palatable

additions to the ordinary aliment of Swans!’ Ay, you may grunt; I wish I

had you--in a pie!”

Slowly, out through the gap between yon grey crag and the thorn-tree,

paces the doe, halting to drink just where the faint star of eve shoots

its gleam along the wave. The musician forgets the swans and quickens

his pace, expecting to meet the doe’s wonted companion. He is not

disappointed. He comes on Guy Darrell where the twilight shadow falls

darkest between the grey crag and the thorn-tree.

“Dear Fellow Hermit,” said Darrell, almost gaily, yet with more than

usual affection in his greeting and voice, “you find me just when I want

you. I am as one whose eyes have been strained by a violent conflict

of colours, and your quiet presence is like the relief of a return to

green. I have news for you, Fairthorn. You, who know more of my secrets

than any other man, shall be the first to learn a decision that must

bind you and me more together--but not in these scenes, Dick.

‘Ibimus--ibimus!

--------------------Supremum

Carpere iter, comites, parati!’”

“What do you mean, sir?” asked Fairthorn. “My mind always misgives me

when I hear you quoting Horace. Some reflection about the certainty of

death, or other disagreeable subjects, is sure to follow!”

“Death! No, Dick--not now. Marriage-bells and joy, Dick! We shall have a

wedding!”

“What! You will marry at last! And it must be that beautiful Caroline

Lyndsay! It must--it must! You can never love another! You know it, my

dear, dear master. I shall see you, then, happy before I die.”

“Tut, foolish old friend!” said Darrell, leaning his aria tenderly on

Fairthorn’s shoulder, and walking on slowly towards the house. “How

often must I tell you that no Marriage-bells can ring for me!”

“But you have told me, too, that you went to Twickenham to steal a sight

of her again; and that it was the sight of her that made you resolve to

wed no one else. And when I have railed against her for fickleness, have

you not nearly frightened me out of my wits, as if no one might rail

against her but yourself? And now she is free--and did you not grant

that she would not refuse your hand, and would be true and faithful

henceforth? And yet you insist on being--granite.”

“No, Dick, not granite; I wish I were.”

“Granite and pride,” persisted Dick, courageously. “If one chips a bit

off the granite, one only breaks one’s spade against the pride.”

“Pride--you too!” muttered Darrell, mournfully; then aloud: “No, it is

not pride now, whatever it might have been even yesterday. But I

would rather be racked by all the tortures that pious inquisitors ever

invented out of compassion for obstinate heretics, than condemn the

woman I have so fatally loved to a penance the misery of which she

cannot foresee. She would accept me?--certainly! Why! Because she thinks

she owes me reparation--because she pities me. And my heart tells me

that I might become cruel, and mean, and vindictive, if I were to live

day by day with one who created in me, while my life was at noon, a love

never known in its morn, and to feel that that love’s sole return was

the pity vouchsafed to the nightfall of my age. No; if she pitied,

but did not love me, when, eighteen years ago, we parted under yonder

beech-tree, I should be a dotard to dream that woman’s pity mellows into

love as our locks become grey, and Youth turns our vows into ridicule.

It is not pride that speaks here; it is rather humility, Dick. But we

must not now talk of old age and bygones. Youth and marriage-bells,

Dick! Know that, I have been for hours pondering how to reconcile with

my old-fashioned notions dear Lionel’s happiness. We must think of the

living as well as the dead, Dick. I have solved the problem. I am happy,

and so shall the young folks be.”

“You don’t mean to say that you will consent to--”

“Yes, to Lionel’s marriage with that beautiful girl, whose parentage

we never will ask. Great men are their own ancestors; why not sometimes

fair women? Enough--I consent! I shall of course secure to my kinsman

and his bride an ample fortune. Lionel will have time for his honeymoon

before he departs for the wars. He will fight with good heart now, Dick.

Young folks of the present day cannot bear up against sorrow, as they

were trained to do in mine. And that amiable lady who has so much pity

for me has, of course, still more pity for a charming young couple for

whose marriage she schemed, in order to give me a home, Dick. And rather

than she should pine and fall ill, and--no matter; all shall be settled

as it should be for the happiness of the living. But something else must

be settled; we must think of the dead as well as the living; and this

name of Darrell shall be buried with me in the grave beside my father’s.

Lionel Haughton will keep to his own name. Live the Haughtons! Perish,

but with no blot on their shield--perish the Darrells! Why, what is

that? Tears, Dick? Pooh!--be a man! And I want all your strength; for

you, too, must have a share in the sacrifice. What follows is not the

dictate of pride, if I can read myself aright. No; it is the final

completion and surrender of the object on which so much of my life has

been wasted--but a surrender that satisfies my crotchets of honour.

At all events, if it be pride in disguise, it will demand no victim in

others; you and I may have a sharp pang--we must bear it, Dick.”

“What on earth is coming now?” said Dick, dolefully.

“The due to the dead, Richara Fairthorn. This nook of fair England,

in which I learned from the dead to love honour--this poor domain of

Fawley--shall go in bequest to the College at which I was reared.”

“Sir!”

“It will serve for a fellowship or two to honest, bravehearted young

scholars. It will be thus, while English institutions may last, devoted

to Learning and Honour. It may sustain for mankind some ambition more

generous than mine, it appears, ever was--settled thus, not in mine, but

my dear father’s name, like the Darrell Museum. These are my dues to the

dead, Dick! And the old house thus becomes useless. The new house was

ever a folly. They must go down, both, as soon as the young folks are

married;--not a stone stand on stone! The ploughshare shall pass over

their sites! And this task I order you to see done. I have not strength.

You will then hasten to join me at Sorrento, that corner of earth on

which Horace wished to breathe his last sigh.

‘Ille to mecum locus et beatae

Postulant arces--ibi--tu ’”

“Don’t, sir, don’t. Horace again! It is too much.” Fairthorn was

choking; but as if the idea presented to him was really too monstrous

for belief, he clutched at Darrell with so uncertain and vehement a hand

that he almost caught him by the throat, and sobbed out, “You must be

joking.”

“Seriously and solemnly, Richara Fairthorn,” said Darrell, gently

disentangling the fingers that threatened him with strangulation,

“seriously and solemnly I have uttered to you my deliberate purpose. I

implore you, in the name of our life-long friendship, to face this pain

as I do--resolutely, cheerfully. I implore you to execute to the letter

the instructions I shall leave with you on quitting England, which I

shall do the day Lionel is married; and then, dear old friend, calm

days, clear consciences:--In climes where whole races have passed

away--proud cities themselves sunk in graves--where our petty grief for

a squirearch’s lost house we shall both grow ashamed to indulge--there

we will moralise, rail against vain dreams and idle pride, cultivate

vines and orange trees, with Horace--nay, nay, Dick--with the FLUTE!”

CHAPTER V.

MORE BOUNTEOUS RUN RIVERS WHEN THE ICE THAT LOCKED THEIR FLOW MELTS

INTO THEIR WATERS. AND WHEN FINE NATURES RELENT, THEIR KINDNESS Is

SWELLED BY THE THAW.

Darrell escaped into the house; Fairthorn sunk upon the ground, and

resigned himself for some minutes to unmanly lamentations. Suddenly he

started up; a thought came into his brain--a hope into his breast. He

made a caper--launched himself into a precipitate zig-zag--gained the

hall-door-plunged into his own mysterious hiding-place--and in less than

an hour re-emerged, a letter in his hand, with which he had just time

to catch the postman, as that functionary was striding off from the back

yard with the official bag.

This exploit performed, Fairthorn shambled into his chair at the

dinner-table, as George Morley concluded the grace which preceded the

meal that in Fairthorn’s estimation usually made the grand event of the

passing day. But the poor man’s appetite was gone. As Sophy dined with

Waife, the Morleys alone shared, with host and secretary, the melancholy

entertainment. George was no less silent than Fairthorn; Darrell’s

manner perplexed him. Mrs. Morley, not admitted into her husband’s

confidence in secrets that concerned others, though in all his own he

was to her conjugal sight _pellucidior vitro_, was the chief talker;

and being the best woman in the world, ever wishing to say something

pleasant, she fell to praising the dear old family pictures that scowled

at her from the wall, and informed Fairthorn that she had made great

progress with her sketch of the old house as seen from the lake, and was

in doubt whether she should introduce in the foreground some figures of

the olden time, as in Nash’s Views of Baronial Mansions. But not a

word could she coax out of Fairthorn; and when she turned to appeal to

Darrell, the host suddenly addressed to George a question as to the

text and authorities by which the Papal Church defends its doctrine

of Purgatory. That entailed a long and, no doubt, erudite reply, which

lasted not only through the rest of the dinner, but till Mrs. Motley,

edified by the discourse, and delighted to notice the undeviating

attention which Darrell paid to her distinguished spouse, took advantage

of the first full stop, and retired. Fairthorn finished his bottle of

port, and, far from convinced that there was no Purgatory, but inclined

to advance the novel heresy that Purgatory sometimes commenced on this

side the grave--slinked away, and was seen no more that night; neither

was his flute heard.

Then Darrell rose and said: “I shall go up-stairs to our sick friend for

a few minutes; may I find you here when I come back? Your visit to him

can follow mine.”

On entering Waife’s room, Darrell went straight forward towards Sophy,

and cut off her retreat.

“Fair guest,” said he, with a grace and tenderness of manner which,

when he pleased it, could be ineffably bewitching--“teach me some art

by which in future rather to detain than to scare away the presence

in which a duller age than mine could still recognise the charms

that subdue the young.” He led her back gently to the seat she had

deserted--placed himself next to her--addressed a few cordial queries to

Waife about his health and comforts--and then said: “You must not leave

me for some days yet. I have written by this post to my kinsman, Lionel

Haughton. I have refused to be his ambassador at a court in which, by

all the laws of nations, he is bound to submit himself to his conqueror.

I cannot even hope that he may escape with his freedom. No! chains

for life! Thrice happy, indeed, if that be the merciful sentence you

inflict.”

He raised Sophy’s hand to his lips as he ended, and before she could

even quite comprehend the meaning of his words--so was she startled,

confused, incredulous of such sudden change in fate--the door had closed

on Darrell, and Waife had clasped her to his breast, murmuring, “Is not

Providence kind?”

Darrell rejoined the scholar. “George,” said he, “be kind enough to tell

Alban that you showed me his letter. Be kind enough also to write to

Lady Montfort, and say that I gratefully acknowledge her wish to repair

to me those losses which have left me to face age and the grave alone.

Tell her that her old friend (you remember, George, I knew her as a

child) sees in that wish the same sweet goodness of heart which soothed

him when his son died and his daughter fled. Add that her wish is

gratified. To that marriage in which she compassionately foresaw the

best solace left to my bereaved and baffled existence--to that marriage

I give my consent.”

“You do! Oh, Mr. Darrell, how I honour you!”

“Nay, I no more deserve honour for consenting than I should have

deserved contempt if I had continued to refuse. To do what I deemed

right is not more my wish now than it was twelve hours ago. To what so

sudden a change of resolve, in one who changes resolves very rarely,

may be due, whether to Lady Montfort, to Alban, or to that metaphysical

skill with which you wound into my reason, and compelled me to review

all its judgments, I do not attempt to determine; yet I thought I had

no option but the course I had taken. No; it is fair to yourself to give

you the chief credit; you made me desire, you made me resolve, to find

an option--I have found one. And now pay your visit where mine has

been just paid. It will be three days, I suppose, before Lionel, having

joined his new regiment at * * *, can be here. And then it will be

weeks yet, I believe, before his regiment sails; and I’m all for short

courtships.”

CHAPTER VI.

FAIRTHORN FRIGHTENS SOPHY. SIR ISAAC IS INVITED BY DARRELL, AND

FORMS ONE OF A FAMILY CIRCLE.

Such a sweet voice in singing breaks out from yon leafless beeches!

Waife hears it at noon from his window. Hark! Sophy has found song once

more.