Darrell made no comment nor reply. A grateful look, a warm pressure of the hand, and, when the subject was changed, a clearer brow and livelier smile, thanked the English Alban better than all words.



CHAPTER XIII.

COLONEL MORLEY SHOWS THAT IT IS NOT WITHOUT REASON THAT HE ENJOYS HIS REPUTATION OF KNOWING SOMETHING ABOUT EVERYBODY.

"Well met," said Darrell, the day after Alban had conveyed to him the comforting assurances which had taken one thorn from his side-dispersed one cloud in his evening sky. "Well met," said Darrell, encountering the Colonel a few paces from his own door. "Pray walk with me as far as the New Road. I have promised Lionel to visit the studio of an artist friend of his, in whom he chooses to find a Raffaele, and in whom I suppose, at the price of truth, I shall be urbanely compelled to compliment a dauber."

"Do you speak of Frank Vance?"

"The same."

"You could not visit a worthier man, nor compliment a more promising artist. Vance is one of the few who unite gusto and patience, fancy and brushwork. His female heads, in especial, are exquisite, though they are all, I confess, too much like one another. The man himself is a thoroughly fine fellow. He has been much made of in good society, and remains unspoiled. You will find his manner rather off-hand, the reverse of shy; partly, perhaps, because he has in himself the racy freshness and boldness which he gives to his colours; partly, perhaps, also, because he has in his art the self-esteem that patricians take from their pedigree, and shakes a duke by the hand to prevent the duke holding out to him a finger."

"Good," said Darrell, with his rare, manly laugh. "Being shy myself, I like men who meet one half-way. I see that we shall be at our ease with each other."

"And perhaps still more 'when I tell you that he is connected with an old Eton friend of ours, and deriving no great benefit from that connection; you remember poor Sidney Branthwaite?"

"To be sure. He and I were great friends at Eton somewhat in the same position of pride and poverty. Of all the boys in the school we two had the least pocket-money. Poor Branthwaite! I lost sight of him afterwards. He went into the Church, got only a curacy, and died young."

"And left a son, poorer than himself, who married Frank Vance's sister."

"You don't say so. The Branthwaites were of good old family; what is Mr. Vance's?"

"Respectable enough. Vance's father was one of those clever men who have too many strings to their bow. He, too, was a painter; but he was also a man of letters, in a sort of a way—had a share in a journal, in which he wrote Criticisms on the Fine Arts. A musical composer, too.

"Rather a fine gentleman, I suspect, with a wife who was rather a fine lady. Their house was much frequented by artists and literary men: old Vance, in short, was hospitable—his wife extravagant. Believing that posterity would do that justice to his pictures which his contemporaries refused, Vance left to his family no other provision. After selling his pictures and paying his debts, there was just enough left to bury him. Fortunately, Sir ————, the great painter of that day, had already conceived a liking to Frank Vance—then a mere boy—who had shown genius from an infant, as all true artists do. Sir ———— took him into his studio and gave him lessons. It would have been unlike Sir ————, who was open-hearted but close-fisted, to give anything else. But the boy contrived to support his mother and sister. That fellow, who is now as arrogant a stickler for the dignity of art as you or my Lord Chancellor may be for that of the bar, stooped then to deal clandestinely with fancy shops, and imitate Watteau on fans. I have two hand-screens that he painted for a shop in Rathbone Place. I suppose he may have got ten shillings for them, and now any admirer of Frank's would give L100 apiece for them."

"That is the true soul in which genius lodges, and out of which fire springs," cried Darrell cordially. "Give me the fire that lurks in the flint, and answers by light the stroke of the hard steel. I'm glad Lionel has won a friend in such a man. Sidney Branthwaite's son married Vance's sister—after Vance had won reputation?"

"No; while Vance was still a boy. Young Arthur Branthwaite was an orphan. If he had any living relations, they were too poor to assist him. He wrote poetry much praised by the critics (they deserve to be hanged, those critics!)—scribbled, I suppose, in old Vance's journal; saw Mary Vance a little before her father died; fell in love with her; and on the strength of a volume of verse, in which the critics all solemnly deposed to his surpassing riches—of imagination, rushed to the altar, and sacrificed a wife to the Muses! Those villanous critics will have a dark account to render in the next world! Poor Arthur Branthwaite! For the sake of our old friend, his father, I bought a copy of his little volume. Little as the volume was, I could not read it through."

"What!—below contempt?"

"On the contrary, above comprehension! All poetry praised by critics now-a-days is as hard to understand as a hieroglyphic. I own a weakness for Pope and common sense. I could keep up with our age as far as Byron; after him I was thrown out. However, Arthur was declared by the critics to be a great improvement on Byron—more 'poetical in form'—more 'aesthetically artistic'—more 'objective' or 'subjective' (I am sure I forget which; but it was one or the other, nonsensical, and not English) in his views of man and nature. Very possibly. All I know is—I bought the poems, but could not read them; the critics read them, but did not buy. All that Frank Vance could make by painting hand-screens and fans and album-scraps, he sent, I believe, to the poor poet; but I fear it did not suffice. Arthur, I suspect, must have been publishing another volume on his own account. I saw a Monody on something or other, by Arthur Branthwaite, advertised, and no doubt Frank's fans and hand-screens must have melted into the printer's bill. But the Monody never appeared: the poet died, his young wife too. Frank Vance remains a bachelor, and sneers at gentility—abhors poets—is insulted if you promise posthumous fame—gets the best price he can for his pictures—and is proud to be thought a miser. Here we are at his door."



CHAPTER XIV.

ROMANTIC LOVE PATHOLOGICALLY REGARDED BY FRANK VANCE AND ALBAN MORLEY.

Vance was before his easel, Lionel looking over his shoulder. Never was Darrell more genial than he was that day to Frank Vance. The two men took to each other at once, and talked as familiarly as if the retired lawyer and the rising painter were old fellow-travellers along the same road of life. Darrell was really an exquisite judge of art, and his praise was the more gratifying because discriminating. Of course he gave the due meed of panegyric to the female heads, by which the artist had become so renowned. Lionel took his kinsman aside, and, with a mournful expression of face, showed him the portrait by which, all those varying ideals had been suggested—the portrait of Sophy as Titania.

"And that is Lionel," said the artist, pointing to the rough outline of Bottom.

"Pish!" said Lionel, angrily. Then turning to Darrell: "This is the Sophy we have failed to find, sir—is it not a lovely face?"

"It is indeed," said Darrell. "But that nameless refinement in expression—that arch yet tender elegance in the simple, watchful attitude—these, Mr. Vance, must be your additions to the original."

"No, I assure you, sir," said Lionel: "besides that elegance, that refinement, there was a delicacy in the look and air of that child to which Vance failed to do justice. Own it, Frank."

"Reassure yourself, Mr. Darrell," said Vance, "of any fears which Lionel's enthusiasm might excite. He tells me that Titania is in America; yet, after all, I would rather he saw her again—no cure for love at first sight like a second sight of the beloved object after a long absence."

DARRELL (somewhat gravely).—"A hazardous remedy—it might kill, if it did not cure."

COLONEL MORLEY.—"I suspect, from Vance's manner, that he has tested its efficacy on his own person."

LIONEL.—"NO, mon Colonel—I'll answer for Vance. He in love! Never."

Vance coloured—gave a touch to the nose of a Roman senator in the famous classical picture which he was then painting for a merchant at Manchester—and made no reply. Darrell looked at the artist with a sharp and searching glance.

COLONEL MORLEY.—"Then all the more credit to Vance for his intuitive perception of philosophical truth. Suppose, my dear Lionel, that we light, one idle day, on a beautiful novel, a glowing romance—suppose that, by chance, we are torn from the book in the middle of the interest—we remain under the spell of the illusion—we recall the scenes—we try to guess what should have been the sequel—we think that no romance ever was so captivating, simply because we were not allowed to conclude it. Well, if, some years afterwards, the romance fall again in our way, and we open at the page where we left off, we cry, in the maturity of our sober judgment, 'Mawkish stuff!—is this the same thing that I once thought so beautiful?—how one's tastes do alter!'"

DARRELL.—"Does it not depend on the age in which one began the romance?"

LIONEL.—"Rather, let me think, sir, upon the real depth of the interest—the true beauty of the—"

VANCE (interrupting).—"Heroine?—Not at all, Lionel. I once fell in love—incredible as it may seem to you—nine years ago last January. I was too poor then to aspire to any young lady's hand—therefore I did not tell my love, but 'let concealment,' et cetera, et cetera. She went away with her mamma to complete her education on the Continent. I remained 'Patience on a monument.' She was always before my eyes—the slenderest, shyest creature just eighteen. I never had an idea that she could grow any older, less slender, or less shy. Well, four years afterwards (just before we made our excursion into Surrey, Lionel), she returned to England, still unmarried. I went to a party at which I knew she was to be-saw her, and was cured."

"Bad case of small-pox, or what?" asked the Colonel, smiling.

VANCE—"Nay; everybody said she was extremely improved—that was the mischief—she had improved herself out of my fancy. I had been faithful as wax to one settled impression, and when I saw a fine, full-formed, young Frenchified lady, quite at her ease, armed with eyeglass and bouquet and bustle, away went my dream of the slim blushing maiden. The Colonel is quite right, Lionel; the romance once suspended, 'tis a haunting remembrance till thrown again in our way, but complete disillusion if we try to renew it; though I swear that in my case the interest was deep, and the heroine improved in her beauty. So with you and that dear little creature. See her again, and you'll tease, me no more to give you that portrait of Titania at watch over Bottom's soft slumbers. All a Midsummer Night's Dream, Lionel. Titania fades back into the arms of Oberon, and would not be Titania if you could make her—Mrs. Bottom."



CHAPTER XV.

EVEN COLONEL MORLEY, (KNOWING EVERYBODY AND EVERYTHING), IS PUZZLED WHEN IT COMES TO THE PLAIN QUESTION—"WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?"

"I am delighted with Vance," said Darrell, when he and the Colonel were again walking arm-in-arm. "His is not one of those meagre intellects which have nothing to spare out of the professional line. He has humour. Humour—strength's rich superfluity."

"I like your definition," said the Colonel. "And humour in Vance, though fantastic, is not without subtlety. There was much real kindness in his obvious design to quiz Lionel out of that silly enthusiasm for—"

"For a pretty child, reared up to be a strolling player," interrupted Darrell. "Don't call it silly enthusiasm. I call it chivalrous compassion. Were it other than compassion, it would not be enthusiasm—it would be degradation. But do you believe, then, that Vance's confession of first love, and its cure, was but a whimsical invention?"

COLONEL MORLEY.—"Not so. Many a grave truth is spoken jestingly. I have no doubt that, allowing for the pardonable exaggeration of a raconteur, Vance was narrating an episode in his own life."

DARRELL.—"Do you think that a grown man, who has ever really felt love, can make a jest of it, and to mere acquaintances?"

COLONEL MORLEY.—"Yes; if he be so thoroughly cured, that he has made a jest of it to himself. And the more lightly he speaks of it, perhaps the more solemnly at one time he felt it. Levity is his revenge on the passion that fooled him."

DARRELL.—"You are evidently an experienced philosopher in the lore of such folly. 'Consultas insapientis sapientiae.' Yet I can scarcely believe that you have ever been in love."

"Yes, I have," said the Colonel bluntly, "and very often! Everybody at my age has—except yourself. So like a man's observation, that," continued the Colonel with much tartness. "No man ever thinks another man capable of a profound and romantic sentiment!"

DARRELL.—"True; I own my shallow fault, and beg you ten thousand pardons. So then you really believe, from your own experience, that there is much in Vance's theory and your own very happy illustration? Could we, after many years, turn back to the romance at the page at which we left off, we should—"

COLONEL MORLEY.—"Not care a straw to read on! Certainly, half the peculiar charm of a person beloved must be ascribed to locality and circumstance."

DARRELL.—"I don't quite understand you."

COLONEL MORLEY.—"Then, as you liked my former illustration, I will explain myself by another one more homely. In a room to which you are accustomed there is a piece of furniture, or an ornament, which so exactly suits the place that you say: 'The prettiest thing I ever saw!' You go away—you return—the piece of furniture or the ornament has been moved into another room. You see it there, and you say: 'Bless me, is that the thing I so much admired!' The strange room does not suit it—losing its old associations and accessories, it has lost its charm. So it is with human beings—seen in one place, the place would be nothing without them; seen in another, the place without them would be all the better!"

DARRELL (musingly)—"There are some puzzles in life which resemble the riddles a child asks you to solve. Your imagination cannot descend low enough for the right guess. Yet, when you are told, you are obliged to say, 'How clever!' Man lives to learn."

"Since you have arrived at that conviction," replied Colonel Morley, amused by his friend's gravity, "I hope that you will rest satisfied with the experiences of Vance and myself; and that if you have a mind to propose to one of the young ladies whose merits we have already discussed, you will not deem it necessary to try what effect a prolonged absence might produce on your good resolution."

"No!" said Darrell, with sudden animation. "Before three days are over my mind shall be made up." "Bravo!—as to whom of the three you would ask in marriage?"

"Or as to the idea of ever marrying again. Adieu, I am going to knock at that door."

"Mr. Vyvyan's! Ah, is it so, indeed? Verily, you are a true Dare-all."

"Do not be alarmed. I go afterwards to an exhibition with Lady Adela, and I dine with the Carr Viponts. My choice is not yet made, and my hand still free."

"His hand still free!" muttered the Colonel, pursuing his walk alone. "Yes—but three days hence—O—What will he do with it?"



CHAPTER XVI.

GUY DARRELL'S DECISION.

Guy Darrell returned home from Carr Vipont's dinner at a late hour. On his table was a note from Lady Adela's father, cordially inviting Darrell to pass the next week at his country-house; London was now emptying fast. On the table too was a parcel, containing a book which Darrell had lent to Miss Vyvyan some weeks ago, and a note from herself. In calling at her father's house that morning, he had learned that Mr. Vyvyan had suddenly resolved to take her into Switzerland, with the view of passing the next winter in Italy. The room was filled with loungers of both sexes. Darrell had stayed but a short time. The leave-taking had been somewhat formal—Flora unusually silent. He opened her note, and read the first lines listlessly; those that followed, with a changing cheek and an earnest eye. He laid down the note very gently, again took it up and reperused. Then he held it to the candle, and it dropped from his hand in tinder. "The innocent child," murmured he, with a soft paternal tenderness; "she knows not what she writes." He began to pace the room with his habitual restlessness when in solitary thought—often stopping—often sighing heavily. At length his face cleared-his lips became firmly set. He summoned his favourite servant. "Mills," said he, "I shall leave town on horseback as soon as the sun rises. Put what I may require for a day or two into the saddle-bags. Possibly, however I may be back by dinner-time. Call me at five o'clock, and then go round to the stables. I shall require no groom to attend me."

The next morning, while the streets were deserted, no houses as yet astir, but the sun bright, the air fresh, Guy Darrell rode from his door. He did not return the same day, nor the next, nor at all. But, late in the evening of the second day, his horse, reeking hot and evidently hard-ridden, stopped at the porch of Fawley Manor-House; and Darrell flung himself from the saddle, and into Fairthorn's arms. "Back again—back again—and to leave no more!" said he, looking round; "Spes et Fortuna valete!"



CHAPTER XVII.

A MAN'S LETTER—UNSATISFACTORY AND PROVOKING AS A MAN'S LETTERS ALWAYS ARE.

GUY DARRELL To COLONEL MORLEY.

Fawley Manor-House, August 11, 18—. I HAVE decided, my dear Alban. I did not take three days to do so, though the third day may be just over ere you learn my decision. I shall never marry again: I abandon that last dream of declining years. My object in returning to the London world was to try whether I could not find, amongst the fairest and most attractive women that the world produces—at least to an English eye—some one who could inspire me with that singleness of affection which could alone justify the hope that I might win in return a wife's esteem and a contented home. That object is now finally relinquished, and with it all idea of resuming the life of cities. I might have re-entered a political career, had I first secured to myself a mind sufficiently serene and healthful for duties that need the concentration of thought and desire. Such a state of mind I cannot secure. I have striven for it; I am baffled. It is said that politics are a jealous mistress—that they require the whole man. The saying is not invariably true in the application it commonly receives—that is, a politician may have some other employment of intellect, which rather enlarges his powers than distracts their political uses. Successful politicians have united with great parliamentary toil and triumph legal occupations or learned studies. But politics do require that the heart should be free, and at peace from all more absorbing private anxieties—from the gnawing of a memory or a care, which dulls ambition and paralyses energy. In this sense politics do require the whole man. If I return to politics now, I should fail to them, and they to me. I feel that the brief interval between me and the grave has need of repose: I find that repose here. I have therefore given the necessary orders to dismiss the pompous retinue which I left behind me, and instructed my agent to sell my London house for whatever it may fetch. I was unwilling to sell it before—unwilling to abandon the hope, however faint, that I might yet regain strength for action. But the very struggle to obtain such strength leaves me exhausted more.

You may believe that it is not without a pang, less of pride than of remorse, that I resign unfulfilled the object towards which all my earlier life was so resolutely shaped. The house I promised my father to re-found dies to dust in my grave. To my father's blood no heir to my wealth can trace. Yet it is a consolation to think that Lionel Haughton is one on whom my father would have smiled approvingly. At my death, therefore, at least the old name will not die; Lionel Haughton will take and be worthy to bear it. Strange weakness of mine, you will say; but I cannot endure the thought that the old name should be quite blotted out of the land. I trust that Lionel may early form a suitable and happy marriage. Sure that he will not choose ignobly, I impose no fetters on his choice.

One word only on that hateful subject, confided so tardily to your friendship, left so thankfully to your discretion. Now that I have once more buried myself in Fawley, it is very unlikely that the man it pains me to name will seek me here. If he does, he cannot molest me as if I were in the London world. Continue, then, I pray you, to leave him alone. And, in adopting your own shrewd belief, that after all there is no such child as he pretends to claim, my mind becomes tranquillised on all that part of my private griefs.

Farewell, old school-friend! Here, so far as I can foretell—here, where my life began, it returns, when Heaven pleases, to close. Here I could not ask you to visit me: what is rest to me would be loss of time to you. But in my late and vain attempt to re-enter that existence in which you have calmly and wisely gathered round yourself, "all that should accompany old age-honour, love, obedience, troops of friends"—nothing so repaid the effort—nothing now so pleasantly remains to recollection—as the brief renewal of that easy commune which men like me never know, save with those whose laughter brings back to them a gale from the old playground. "Vive, vale;" I will not add, "Sis memor mei." So many my obligations to your kindness, that you will be forced to remember me whenever you recall the not "painful subjects" of early friendship and lasting gratitude. Recall only those when reminded of GUY DARRELL.



CHAPTER XVIII.

NO COINAGE IN CIRCULATION SO FLUCTUATES IN VALUE AS THE WORTH OF A MARRIAGEABLE MAN.

Colonel Morley was not surprised (that, we know, he could not be, by any fresh experience of human waywardness and caprice), but much disturbed and much vexed by the unexpected nature of Darrell's communication. Schemes for Darrell's future lead become plans of his own. Talk with his old school-fellow had, within the last three months, entered into the pleasures of his age. Darrell's abrupt and final renunciation of this social world made at once a void in the business of Alban's mind, and in the affections of Alban's heart. And no adequate reason assigned for so sudden a flight and so morbid a resolve! Some tormenting remembrance—some rankling grief—distinct from those of which Alban was cognisant, from those in which he had been consulted, was implied, but by vague and general hints. But what was the remembrance or the grief, Alban Morley, who knew everything, was quite persuaded that Darrell would never suffer him to know. Could it be in any way connected with those three young ladies to whom Darrell's attentions had been so perversely impartial? The Colonel did not fail to observe that to those young ladies Darrell's letter made no allusion. Was it not possible that he had really felt for one of them a deeper sentiment than a man advanced in years ever likes to own even to his nearest friend—hazarded a proposal, and met with a rebuff? If so, Alban conjectured the female culprit by whom the sentiment had been inspired, and the rebuff administered. "That mischievous kitten, Flora Vyvyan," growled the Colonel. "I always felt that she had the claws of a tigress under her patte de velours!" Roused by this suspicion, he sallied forth to call on the Vyvyans. Mr. Vyvyan, a widower, one of those quiet gentleman-like men who sit much in the drawing-room and like receiving morning visitors, was at home to him. "So Darrell has left town for the season," said the Colonel, pushing straight to the point.

"Yes," said Mr. Vyvyan. "I had a note from him this morning to say he had renounced all hope of—"

"What?" cried the Colonel.

"Joining us in Switzerland. I am so sorry. Flora still more sorry. She is accustomed to have her own way, and she had set her heart on hearing Darrell read 'Manfred' in sight of the Jungfrau!"

"Um!" said the Colonel. "What might be sport to her might be death to him. A man at his age is not too old to fall in love with a young lady of hers. But he is too old not to be extremely ridiculous to such a young lady if he does."

"Colonel Morley—Fie!" cried an angry voice behind him. Flora had entered the room unobserved. Her face was much flushed, and her eyelids looked as if tears had lately swelled beneath them, and were swelling still.

"What have I said to merit your rebuke?" asked the Colonel composedly.

"Said! coupled the thought of ridicule with the name of Mr. Darrell!"

"Take care, Morley," said Mr. Vyvyan, laughing. "Flora is positively superstitious in her respect for Guy Darrell; and you cannot offend her more than by implying that he is mortal. Nay, child, it is very natural. Quite apart from his fame, there is something in that man's familiar talk, or rather, perhaps, in the very sound of his voice, which makes most other society seem flat and insipid.

"I feel it myself. And when Flora's young admirers flutter and babble round her—just after Darrell has quitted his chair beside her—they seem very poor company. I am sure, Flora," continued Vyvyan kindly, "that the mere acquaintance of such a man has done you much good; and I am now in great hopes that, whenever you marry, it will be a man of sense."

"Um!" again said the Colonel, eyeing Flora aslant, but with much attention. "How I wish, for my friend's sake, that he was of an age which inspired Miss Vyvyan with less—veneration."

Flora turned her back on the Colonel, looking out of the window, and her small foot beating the ground with nervous irritation.

"It was given out that Darrell intended to marry again," said Mr. Vyvyan. "A man of that sort requires a very superior highly-educated woman; and if Miss Carr Vipont had been a little more of his age she would have just suited him. But I am patriot enough to hope that he will remain single, and have no wife but his country, like Mr. Pitt." The Colonel having now satisfied his curiosity, and assured himself that Darrell was, there at least, no rejected suitor, rose and approached Flora to make peace and to take leave. As he held out his hand, he was struck with the change in a countenance usually so gay in its aspect—it spoke of more than dejection, it betrayed distress; when she took his hand, she retained it, and looked into his eyes wistfully; evidently there was something on her mind which she wished to express and did not know how. At length she said in a whisper: "You are Mr. Darrell's most intimate friend; I have heard him say so; shall you see him soon?"

"I fear not; but why?"

"Why? you, his friend; do you not perceive that he is not happy? I, a mere stranger, saw it at the first. You should cheer and comfort him; you have that right—it is a noble privilege."

"My dear young lady," said the Colonel, touched, "you have a better heart than I thought for. It is true Darrell is not a happy man; but can you give me any message that might cheer him more than an old bachelor's commonplace exhortations to take heart, forget the rains of yesterday, and hope for some gleam of sun on the morrow?"

"No," said Flora, sadly, "it would be a presumption indeed in me, to affect the consoler's part; but"—(her lips quivered)—"but if I may judge by his letter, I may never see him again."

"His letter! He has written to you, then, as well as to your father?"

"Yes," said Flora, confused and colouring, "a few lines in answer to a silly note of mine; yes, tell him that I shall never forget his kind counsels, his delicate, indulgent construction of—of—in short, tell him my father is right, and that I shall be better and wiser all my life for the few short weeks in which I have known Guy Darrell."

"What secrets are you two whispering there?" asked Mr. Vyvyan from his easy-chair.

"Ask her ten years hence," said the Colonel, as he retreated to the door. "The fairest leaves in the flower are the last that the bud will disclose."

From Mr. Vyvyan the Colonel went to Lord ——-'s. His lordship had also heard from Darrell that morning; Darrell declined the invitation to ——Hall; business at Fawley. Lady Adela had borne the disappointment with her wonted serenity of temper, and had gone out shopping. Darrell had certainly not offered his hand in that quarter; had he done so—whether refused or accepted—all persons yet left in London would have heard the news. Thence the Colonel repaired to Carr Vipont's. Lady Selina was at home and exceedingly cross. Carr had been astonished by a letter from Mr. Darrell, dated Fawley—left town for the season without even calling to take leave—a most eccentric man. She feared his head was a little touched—that he knew it, but did not like to own it—perhaps the doctors had told him he must keep quiet, and not excite himself with politics. "I had thought," said Lady Selina, "that he might have felt a growing attachment for Honoria; and considering the disparity of years, and that Honoria certainly might marry any one, he was too proud to incur the risk of refusal. But I will tell you in confidence, as a relation and dear friend, that Honoria has a very superior mind, and might have overlooked the mere age: congenial tastes—you understand. But on thinking it all over, I begin to doubt whether that be the true reason for his running away in this wild sort of manner. My maid tells me that his house-steward called to say that the establishment was to be broken up. That looks as if he had resigned London for good; just, too, when, Carr says, the CRISIS, so long put off, is sure to burst on us. I'm quite sick of clever men—one never knows how to trust them; if they are not dishonest they are eccentric! I have just been telling Honoria that clever men are, after all, the most tiresome husbands. Well, what makes you so silent? What do you say? Why don't you speak?"

"I am slowly recovering from my shock," said the Colonel. "So Darrell shirks the CRISIS, and has not even hinted a preference for Honoria, the very girl in all London that would have made him a safe, rational companion. I told him so, and he never denied it. But it is a comfort to think he is no loss. Old monster!"

"Nay," said Lady Selina, mollified by so much sympathy, "I don't say he is no loss. Honestly speaking—between ourselves—I think he is a very great loss. An alliance between him and Honoria would have united all the Vipont influence. Lord Montfort has the greatest confidence in Darrell; and if this CRISIS comes, it is absolutely necessary for the Vipont interest that it should find somebody who can speak. Really, my dear Colonel Morley, you, who have such an influence over this very odd man, should exert it now. One must not be over-nice in times of CRISIS; the country is at stake, Cousin Alban."

"I will do my best," said the Colonel; "I am quite aware that an alliance which would secure Darrell's talents to the House of Vipont, and the House of Vipont to Darrell's talents, would—but 'tis no use talking, we must not sacrifice Honoria even on the altar of her country's interest!"

"Sacrifice! Nonsense! The man is not young certainly, but then what a grand creature, and so clever."

"Clever—yes! But that was your very objection to him five minutes ago."

"I forgot the CRISIS.—One don't want clever men every day, but there are days when one does want them!"

"I envy you that aphorism. But from what you now imply, I fear that Honoria may have allowed her thoughts to settle upon what may never take place; and if so, she may fret."

"Fret! a daughter of mine fret!—and of all my daughters, Honoria! A girl of the best-disciplined mind! Fret! what a word!—vulgar!"

COLONEL MORLEY.—"So it is; I blush for it; but let us understand each other. If Darrell proposed for Honoria, you think, ambition apart, she would esteem him sufficiently for a decided preference."

LADY SELINA,—"If that be his doubt, re-assure him. He is shy-men of genius are; Honoria would esteem him! Till he has actually proposed it would compromise her to say more even to you."

COLONEL MORLEY.—"And if that be not the doubt, and if I ascertain that Darrell has no idea of proposing, Honoria would—"

LADY SELINA.—"Despise him. Ah, I see by your countenance that you think I should prepare her. Is it so, frankly?"

COLONEL MORLEY.—"Frankly, then. I think Guy Darrell, like many other men, has been so long in making up his mind to marry again that he has lost the right moment, and will never find it."

Lady Selina smells at her vinaigrette, and replies in her softest, affectedest, civilest, and crushingest manner: "POOR—DEAR—OLD MAN!"



CHAPTER XIX.

MAN IS NOT PERMITTED, WITH ULTIMATE IMPUNITY, TO EXASPERATE THE ENVIES AND INSULT THE MISERIES OF THOSE AROUND HIM, BY A SYSTEMATIC PERSEVERANCE IN WILFUL-CELIBACY. IN VAIN MAY HE SCHEME, IN THE MARRIAGE OF INJURED FRIENDS, TO PROVIDE ARM-CHAIRS, AND FOOT-STOOLS, AND PRATTLING BABIES FOR THE LUXURIOUS DELECTATION OF HIS INDOLENT AGE. THE AVENGING EUMENIDES (BEING THEMSELVES ANCIENT VIRGINS NEGLECTED) SHALL HUMBLE HIS INSOLENCE, BAFFLE HIS PROJECTS, AND CONDEMN HIS DECLINING YEARS TO THE HORRORS OF SOLITUDE,—RARELY EVEN WAKENING HIS SOUL TO THE GRACE OF REPENTANCE.

The Colonel, before returning home, dropped into the Clubs, and took care to give to Darrell's sudden disappearance a plausible and commonplace construction. The season was just over. Darrell had gone to the country. The town establishment was broken up, because the house in Carlton Gardens was to be sold. Darrell did not like the situation—found the air relaxing—Park Lane or Grosvenor Square were on higher ground. Besides, the staircase was bad for a house of such pretensions—not suited to large parties. Next season Darrell might be in a position when he would have to give large parties, &c., &c. As no one is inclined to suppose that a man will retire from public life just when he has a chance of office, so the Clubs took Alban Morley's remarks unsuspiciously, and generally agreed that Darrell showed great tact in absenting himself from town during the transition state of politics that always precedes a CRISIS, and that it was quite clear that he calculated on playing a great part when the CRISIS was over, by finding his house had grown too small for him. Thus paving the way to Darrell's easy return to the world, should he repent of his retreat (a chance which Alban by no means dismissed from his reckoning), the Colonel returned home to find his nephew George awaiting him there. The scholarly clergyman had ensconced himself in the back drawing-room, fitted up as a library, and was making free with the books. "What have you there, George?" asked the Colonel, after shaking him by the hand. "You seemed quite absorbed in its contents, and would not have noticed my presence but for Gyp's bark."

"A volume of poems I never chanced to meet before, full of true genius."

"Bless me, poor Arthur Branthwaite's poems. And you were positively reading those—not induced to do so by respect for his father? Could you make head or tail of them?"

"There is a class of poetry which displeases middle age by the very attributes which render it charming to the young; for each generation has a youth with idiosyncrasies peculiar to itself, and a peculiar poetry by which those idiosyncrasies are expressed."

Here George was beginning to grow metaphysical, and somewhat German, when his uncle's face assumed an expression which can only be compared to that of a man who dreads a very severe and long operation. George humanely hastened to relieve his mind.

"But I will not bore you at present."

"Thank you," said the Colonel, brightening up.

"Perhaps you will lend me the book. I am going down to Lady Montfort's by-and-by, and I can read it by the way."

"Yes, I will lend it to you till next season. Let me have it again then, to put on the table when Frank Vance comes to breakfast with me. The poet was his brother-in-law; and though, for that reason, poets and poetry are a sore subject with Frank, yet the last time he breakfasted here, I felt, by the shake of his hand in parting, that he felt pleased by a mark of respect to all that is left of poor Arthur Branthwaite. So you are going to Lady Montfort? Ask her why she chits me!"

"My dear uncle! You know how secluded her life is at present; but she has charged me to assure you of her unalterable regard for you; and whenever her health and spirits are somewhat more recovered, I have no doubt that she will ask you to give her the occasion to make that assurance in person."

COLONEL MORLEY.—"Can her health and spirits continue so long affected by grief for the loss of that distant acquaintance whom the law called her husband?"

GEORGE.—"She is very far from well, and her spirits are certainly much broken. And now, uncle, for the little favour I came to ask. Since you presented me to Mr. Darrell, he kindly sent me two or three invitations to dinner, which my frequent absence from town would not allow me to accept. I ought to call on him; and, as I feel ashamed not to have done so before, I wish you would accompany me to his house. One happy word from you would save me a relapse into stutter. When I want to apologise I always stutter."

"Darrell has left town," said the Colonel, roughly, "you have missed an opportunity that will never occur again. The most charming companion; an intellect so manly, yet so sweet! I shall never find such another." And for the first time in thirty years a tear stole to Alban Morley's eye.

GEORGE.—"When did he leave town?"

COLONEL MORLEY.—"Three days ago."

GEORGE.—"Three days ago! and for the Continent again?"

COLONEL MORLEY.—"No; for the Hermitage, George. I have such a letter from him! You know how many years he has been absent from the world. When, this year, he re-appeared, he and I grew more intimate than we had ever been since we had left school; for though the same capital held us before, he was then too occupied for much familiarity with an idle man like me. But just when I was intertwining what is left of my life with the bright threads of his, he snaps the web asunder: he quits this London world again; says he will return to it no more."

GEORGE.—"Yet I did hear that he proposed to renew his parliamentary career; nay, that he was about to form a second marriage, with Honoria Vipont?"

COLONEL MORLEY.—"Mere gossip-not true. No, he will never marry again. Three days ago I thought it certain that he would—certain that I should find for my old age a nook in his home—the easiest chair in his social circle; that my daily newspaper would have a fresh interest, in the praise of his name or the report of his speech; that I should walk proudly into White's, sure to hear there of Guy Darrell; that I should keep from misanthropical rust my dry knowledge of life, planning shrewd panegyrics to him of a young happy wife, needing all his indulgence—panegyrics to her of the high-minded sensitive man, claiming tender respect and delicate soothing;—that thus, day by day, I should have made more pleasant the home in which I should have planted myself, and found in his children boys to lecture and girls to spoil. Don't be jealous, George. I like your wife, I love your little ones, and you will inherit all I have to leave. But to an old bachelor, who would keep young to the last, there is no place so sunny as the hearth of an old school-friend. But my house of cards is blown down—talk of it no more—'tis a painful subject. You met Lionel Haughton here the last time you called—how did you like him!"

"Very much indeed."

"Well, then, since you cannot call on Darrell, call on him."

GEORGE (with animation).—"It is just what I meant to do—what is his address?"

COLONEL MORLEY—"There is his card—take it. He was here last night to inquire if I knew where Darrell had gone, though no one in his household, nor I either, suspected till this morning that Darrell had left town for good. You will find Lionel at home, for I sent him word I would call. But really I am not up to it now. Tell him from me that Mr. Darrell will not return to Carlton Gardens this season, and is gone to Fawley. At present Lionel need not know more—you understand? And now, my dear George, good day."



CHAPTER XX.

EACH GENERATION HAS ITS OWN CRITICAL CANONS IN POETRY AS WELL AS IN POLITICAL CREEDS, FINANCIAL SYSTEMS, OR WHATEVER OTHER CHANGEABLE MATTERS OF TASTE ARE CALLED "SETTLED QUESTIONS" AND "FIXED OPINIONS."

George, musing much over all that his uncle had said respecting Darrell, took his way to Lionel's lodgings. The young man received him with the cordial greeting due from Darrell's kinsman to Colonel Morley's nephew, but tempered by the respect no less due to the distinction and the calling of the eloquent preacher.

Lionel was perceptibly affected by learning that Darrell had thus suddenly returned to the gloomy beech-woods of Fawley; and he evinced his anxious interest in his benefactor with so much spontaneous tenderness of feeling that George, as if in sympathy, warmed into the same theme. "I can well conceive," said he, "your affection for Mr. Darrell. I remember, when I was a boy, how powerfully he impressed me, though I saw but little of him. He was then in the zenith of his career, and had but few moments to give to a boy like me; but the ring of his voice and the flash of his eye sent me back to school, dreaming of fame and intent on prizes. I spent part of one Easter vacation at his house in town; he bade his son, who was my schoolfellow, invite me."

LIONEL.—"You knew his son? How Mr. Darrell has felt that loss!"

GEORGE.—"Heaven often veils its most provident mercy in what to man seems its sternest inflictions. That poor boy must have changed his whole nature, if his life had not, to a father like Mr. Darrell, occasioned grief sharper than his death."

LIONEL.—"You amaze me. Mr. Darrell spoke of him as a boy of great promise."

GEORGE.—"He had that kind of energy which to a father conveys the idea of promise, and which might deceive those older than himself—a fine bright-eyed, bold-tongued boy, with just enough awe of his father to bridle his worst qualities before him."

LIONEL.—"What were those?"

GEORGE.—"Headstrong arrogance—relentless cruelty. He had a pride which would have shamed his father out of pride, had Guy Darrell detected its nature—purse pride! I remember his father said to me with a half-laugh: 'My boy must not be galled and mortified as I was every hour at school—clothes patched and pockets empty.' And so, out of mistaken kindness, Mr. Darrell ran into the opposite extreme, and the son was proud, not of his father's fame, but of his father's money, and withal not generous, nor exactly extravagant, but using money as power-power that allowed him to insult an equal or to buy a slave. In a word, his nickname at school was 'Sir Giles Overreach.' His death was the result of his strange passion for tormenting others. He had a fag who could not swim, and who had the greatest terror of the water; and it was while driving this child into the river out of his depth that cramp seized himself, and he was drowned. Yes, when I think what that boy would have been as a man, succeeding to Darrell's wealth—and had Darrell persevered (as he would, perhaps, if the boy had lived) in his public career—to the rank and titles he would probably have acquired and bequeathed—again, I say, in man's affliction is often Heaven's mercy."

Lionel listened aghast. George continued: "Would that I could speak as plainly to Mr. Darrell himself! For we find constantly in the world that there is no error that misleads us like the error that is half a truth wrenched from the other half; and nowhere is such an error so common as when man applies it to the judgment of some event in his own life, and separates calamity from consolation."

LIONEL.—"True; but who could have the heart to tell a mourning father that his dead son was worthless?"

GEORGE.—"Alas! my young friend, the preacher must sometimes harden his own heart if he would strike home to another's soul. But I am not sure that Mr. Darrell would need so cruel a kindness. I believe that his clear intellect must have divined some portions of his son's nature which enabled him to bear the loss with fortitude. And he did bear it bravely. But now, Mr. Haughton, if you have the rest of the day free, I am about to make you an unceremonious proposition for its disposal. A lady who knew Mr. Darrell when she was very young has—a strong desire to form your acquaintance. She resides on the banks of the Thames, a little above Twickenham. I have promised to call on her this evening. Shall we dine together at Richmond? and afterwards we can take a boat to her villa."

Lionel at once accepted, thinking so little of the lady that he did not even ask her name. He was pleased to have a companion with whom he could talk of Darrell. He asked but delay to write a few lines of affectionate inquiry to his kinsman at Fawley, and, while he wrote, George took out Arthur Branthwaite's poems, and resumed their perusal. Lionel having sealed his letter, George extended the book to him. "Here are some remarkable poems by a brother-in-law of that remarkable artist, Frank Vance."

"Frank Vance! True, he had a brother-in-law a poet. I admire Frank so much; and, though he professes to sneer at poetry, he is so associated in my mind with poetical images that I am prepossessed beforehand in favour of all that brings him, despite himself, in connection with poetry."

"Tell me then," said George, pointing out a passage in the volume, "what you think of these lines. My good uncle would call them gibberish. I am not sure that I can construe them; but when I was your age, I think I could—what say you?"

Lionel glanced. "Exquisite indeed!—nothing can be clearer—they express exactly a sentiment in myself that I could never explain."

"Just so," said George, laughing. "Youth has a sentiment that it cannot explain, and the sentiment is expressed in a form of poetry that middle age cannot construe. It is true that poetry of the grand order interests equally all ages; but the world ever throws out a poetry not of the grandest; not meant to be durable—not meant to be universal, but following the shifts and changes of human sentiment, and just like those pretty sundials formed by flowers, which bloom to tell the hour, open their buds to tell it, and, telling it, fade themselves from time."

Not listening to the critic, Lionel continued to read the poems, exclaiming, "How exquisite!—how true!"



CHAPTER XXI.

IN LIFE, AS IN ART, THE BEAUTIFUL MOVES IN CURVES.

They have dined.—George Morley takes the oars, and the boat cuts through the dance of waves flushed by the golden sunset. Beautiful river! which might furnish the English tale-teller with legends wild as those culled on shores licked by Hydaspes, and sweet as those which Cephisus ever blended with the songs of nightingales and the breath of violets! But what true English poet ever names thee, O Father Thames, without a melodious tribute? And what child ever whiled away summer noons along thy grassy banks, nor hallowed thy remembrance among the fairy days of life?

Silently Lionel bent over the side of the gliding boat; his mind carried back to the same soft stream five years ago. How vast a space in his short existence those five years seemed to fill! And how distant from the young man, rich in the attributes of wealth, armed with each weapon of distinction, seemed the hour when the boy had groaned aloud, "'Fortune is so far, Fame so impossible!'" Farther and farther yet than his present worldly station from his past seemed the image that had first called forth in his breast the dreamy sentiment, which the sternest of us in after life never, utterly forget. Passions rage and vanish, and when all their storms are gone, yea, it may be, at the verge of the very grave, we look back and see like a star the female face, even though it be a child's, that first set us vaguely wondering at the charm in a human presence, at the void in a smile withdrawn! How many of us could recall a Beatrice through the gaps of ruined hope, seen, as by the Florentine, on the earth a guileless infant, in the heavens a spirit glorified! Yes—Laura was an affectation—Beatrice a reality!

George's voice broke somewhat distastefully on Lionel's reverie. "We near our destination, and you have not asked me even the name of the lady to whom you are to render homage. It is Lady Montfort, widow to the last Marquess. You have no doubt heard Mr. Darrell speak of her?"

"Never Mr. Darrell—Colonel Morley often. And in the world I have heard her cited as perhaps the handsomest, and certainly the haughtiest, woman in England."

"Never heard Mr. Darrell mention her! that is strange indeed," said George Morley, catching at Lionel's first words, and unnoticing his after comment. "She was much in his house as a child, shared in his daughter's education."

"Perhaps for that very reason he shuns her name. Never but once did I hear him allude to his daughter; nor can I wonder at that, if it be true, as I have been told by people who seem to know very little of the particulars, that, while yet scarcely out of the nursery, she fled from his house with some low adventurer—a Mr. Hammond—died abroad the first year of that unhappy marriage."

"Yes, that is the correct outline of the story; and, as you guess, it explains why Mr. Darrell avoids mention of one, whom he associates with his daughter's name; though, if you desire a theme dear to Lady Montfort, you can select none that more interests her grateful heart than praise of the man who saved her mother from penury, and secured to herself the accomplishments and instruction which have been her chief solace."

"Chief solace! Was she not happy with Lord Montfort? What sort of man was he?"

"I owe to Lord Montfort the living I hold, and I can remember the good qualities alone of a benefactor. If Lady Montfort was not happy with him, it is just to both to say that she never complained. But there is much in Lady Montfort's character which the Marquess apparently failed to appreciate; at all events, they had little in common, and what was called Lady Montfort's haughtiness was perhaps but the dignity with which a woman of grand nature checks the pity that would debase her—the admiration that would sully—guards her own beauty, and protects her husband's name. Here we are. Will you stay for a few minutes in the boat, while I go to prepare Lady Montfort for your visit?"

George leapt ashore, and Lionel remained under the covert of mighty willows that dipped their leaves into the wave. Looking through the green interstices of the foliage, he saw at the far end of the lawn, on a curving bank by which the glittering tide shot oblique, a simple arbour—an arbour like that from which he had looked upon summer stars five years ago—not so densely covered with the honeysuckle; still the honeysuckle, recently trained there, was fast creeping up the sides; and through the trellis of the woodwork and the leaves of the flowering shrub, he just caught a glimpse of some form within—the white robe of a female form in a slow gentle movement-tending perhaps the flowers that wreathed the arbour. Now it was still, now it stirred again; now it was suddenly lost to view. Had the inmate left the arbour? Was the inmate Lady Montfort? George Morley's step had not passed in that direction.



CHAPTER XXII.

A QUIET SCENE-AN UNQUIET HEART.

Meanwhile, not far from the willow-bank which sheltered Lionel, but far enough to be out of her sight and beyond her hearing, George Morley found Lady Montfort seated alone. It was a spot on which Milton might have placed the lady in "Comus"—a circle of the smoothest sward, ringed everywhere (except at one opening which left the glassy river in full view) with thick bosks of dark evergreens and shrubs of livelier verdure; oak and chest nut backing and overhanging all. Flowers, too, raised on rustic tiers and stages; a tiny fountain, shooting up from a basin starred with the water-lily; a rustic table, on which lay hooks and the implements of woman's graceful work; so that the place had the home-look of a chamber, and spoke that intense love of the out-door life which abounds in our old poets from Chaucer down to the day when minstrels, polished into wits, took to Will's Coffee-house, and the lark came no more to bid bards

"Good morrow From his watch-tower in the skies."

But long since, thank Heaven we have again got back the English poetry which chimes to the babble of the waters, and the riot of the birds; and just as that poetry is the freshest which the out-door life has the most nourished, so I believe that there is no surer sign of the rich vitality which finds its raciest joys in sources the most innocent, than the childlike taste for that same out-door life. Whether you take from fortune the palace or the cottage, add to your chambers a hall in the courts of Nature. Let the earth but give you room to stand on; well, look up—Is it nothing to have for your roof-tree—Heaven?

Caroline Montfort (be her titles dropped) is changed since we last saw her. The beauty is not less in degree, but it has gained in one attribute, lost in another; it commands less, it touches more. Still in deep mourning, the sombre dress throws a paler shade over the cheek. The eyes, more sunken beneath the brow, appear larger, softer. There is that expression of fatigue which either accompanies impaired health or succeeds to mental struggle and disquietude. But the coldness or pride of mien which was peculiar to Caroline as a wife is gone—as if in widowhood it was no longer needed. A something like humility prevailed over the look and the bearing which had been so tranquilly majestic. As at the approach of her cousin she started from her seat, there was a nervous tremor in her eagerness; a rush of colour to the cheeks; an anxious quivering of the lip; a flutter in the tones of the sweet low voice: "Well, George."

"Mr. Darrell is not in London; he went to Fawley three days ago; at least he is there now. I have this from my uncle, to whom he wrote; and whom his departure has vexed and saddened."

"Three days ago! It must have been he, then! I was not deceived," murmured Caroline, and her eyes wandered mound.

"There is no truth in the report you heard that he was to marry Honoria Vipont. My uncle thinks he will never marry again, and implies that he has resumed his solitary life at Fawley with a resolve to quit it no more."

Lady Montfort listened silently, bending her face over the fountain, and dropping amidst its playful spray the leaves of a rose which she had abstractedly plucked as George was speaking.

"I have, therefore, fulfilled your commission so far," renewed George Morley. "I have ascertained that Mr. Darrell is alive, and doubtless well; so that it could not have been his ghost that startled you amidst yonder thicket. But I have done more: I have forestalled the wish you expressed to become acquainted with young Haughton; and your object in postponing the accomplishment of that wish while Mr. Darrell himself was in town having ceased with Mr. Darrell's departure, I have ventured to bring the young man with me. He is in the boat yonder. Will you receive him? Or—but, my dear cousin, are you not too unwell today? What is the matter? Oh, I can easily make an excuse for you to Haughton. I will run and do so."

"No, George, no. I am as well as usual. I will see Mr. Haughton. All that you have heard of him, and have told me, interests me so much in his favour; and besides—" She did not finish the sentence; but led away by some other thought, asked, "Have you no news of our missing friend?"

"None as yet; but in a few days I shall renew my search. Now, then, I will go for Haughton."

"Do so; and George, when you have presented him to me, will you kindly join that dear anxious child yonder!

"She is in the new arbour, or near it-her favourite spot. You must sustain her spirits, and give her hope. You cannot guess how eagerly she looks forward to your visits, and how gratefully she relies on your exertions."

George shook his head half despondingly, and saying briefly, "My exertions have established no claim to her gratitude as yet," went quickly back for Lionel.



CHAPTER XXIII.

SOMETHING ON AN OLD SUBJECT, WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SAID BEFORE

Although Lionel was prepared to see a very handsome woman in Lady Montfort, the beauty of her countenance took him by surprise. No preparation by the eulogies of description can lessen the effect that the first sight of a beautiful object produces upon a mind to which refinement of idea gives an accurate and quick comprehension of beauty. Be it a work of art, a scene in nature, or, rarest of all, a human face divine, a beauty never before beheld strikes us with hidden pleasure, like a burst of light. And it is a pleasure that elevates; the imagination feels itself richer by a new idea of excellence; for not only is real beauty wholly original, having no prototype, but its immediate influence is spiritual. It may seem strange—I appeal to every observant artist if the assertion be not true—but the first sight of the most perfect order of female beauty, rather than courting, rebukes and strikes back, every grosser instinct that would alloy admiration. There must be some meanness and blemish in the beauty which the sensualist no sooner beholds than he covets. In the higher incarnation of the abstract idea which runs through all our notions of moral good and celestial purity—even if the moment the eye sees the heart loves the image—the love has in it something of the reverence which it was said the charms of Virtue would produce could her form be made visible; nor could mere human love obtrude itself till the sweet awe of the first effect had been familiarised away. And I apprehend that it is this exalting or etherealising attribute of beauty to which all poets, all writers who would poetise the realities of life, have unconsciously rendered homage, in the rank to which they elevate what, stripped of such attribute, would be but a gaudy idol of painted clay. If, from the loftiest epic to the tritest novel, a heroine is often little more than a name to which we are called upon to bow, as to a symbol representing beauty, and if we ourselves (be we ever so indifferent in our common life to fair faces) feel that, in art at least, imagination needs an image of the Beautiful—if, in a word, both poet and reader here would not be left excuseless, it is because in our inmost hearts there is a sentiment which links the ideal of beauty with the Supersensual. Wouldst thou, for instance, form some vague conception of the shape worn by a pure soul released? wouldst thou give to it the likeness of an ugly hag? or wouldst thou not ransack all thy remembrances and conceptions of forms most beauteous to clothe the holy image? Do so: now bring it thus robed with the richest graces before thy mind's eye. Well, seest thou now the excuse for poets in the rank they give to BEAUTY? Seest thou now how high from the realm of the senses soars the mysterious Archetype? Without the idea of beauty, couldst thou conceive a form in which to clothe a soul that has entered heaven?



CHAPTER XXIV.

AGREEABLE SURPRISES ARE THE PERQUISITES OF YOUTH.

If the beauty of Lady Montfort's countenance took Lionel by surprise, still more might he wonder at the winning kindness of her address—a kindness of look, manner, voice, which seemed to welcome him not as a chance acquaintance but as a new-found relation. The first few sentences, in giving them a subject of common interest, introduced into their converse a sort of confiding household familiarity. For Lionel, ascribing Lady Montfort's gracious reception to her early recollections of his kinsman, began at once to speak of Guy Darrell; and in a little time they were walking over the turf, or through the winding alleys of the garden, linking talk to the same theme, she by question, he by answer—he, charmed to expatiate—she, pleased to listen—and liking each other more and more, as she recognised in all he said a bright young heart, overflowing with grateful and proud affection, and as he felt instinctively that he was with one who sympathised in his enthusiasm—one who had known the great man in his busy day, ere the rush of his career had paused, whose childhood had lent a smile to the great man's home before childhood and smile had left it.

As they thus conversed, Lionel now and then, in the turns of their walk, caught a glimpse of George Morley in the distance, walking also side by side with some young companion, and ever as he caught that glimpse a strange restless curiosity shot across his mind, and distracted it even from praise of Guy Darrell. Who could that be with George? Was it a relation of Lady Montfort's? The figure was not in mourning; its shape seemed slight and youthful—now it passes by that acacia tree,—standing for a moment apart and distinct from George's shadow, but its own outline dim in the deepening twilight—now it has passed on, lost amongst the laurels.

A turn in the walk brought Lionel and Lady Montfort before the windows of the house, which was not large for the rank of the owner, but commodious, with no pretence to architectural beauty—dark-red brick, a century and a half old—irregular; jutting forth here, receding there, so as to produce that depth of light and shadow which lends a certain picturesque charm even to the least ornate buildings—a charm to which the Gothic architecture owes half its beauty. Jessamine, roses, wooodbine, ivy, trained up the angles and between the windows. Altogether the house had that air of HOME which had been wanting to the regal formality of Moutfort Court. One of the windows, raised above the ground by a short winding stair, stood open. Lights had just been brought into the room within, and Lionel's eye was caught by the gleam. Lady Montfort turned up the stair, and Lionel followed her into the apartment. A harp stood at one corner—not far from it a piano and music-stand. On one of the tables there were the implements of drawing—a sketch in water-colours half finished.

"Our work-room," said Lady Montfort, with a warm cheerful smile, and yet Lionel could see that tears were in her eyes—"mine and my dear pupil's. Yes, that harp is hers. Is he still fond of music—I mean Mr. Darrell?"

"Yes, though he does not care for it in crowds; but he can listen for hours to Fairthorn's flute. You remember Mr. Fairthorn?"

"Ay, I remember him," answered Lady Montfort softly. "Mr. Darrell then likes his music, still?"

Lionel here uttered an exclamation of more than surprise. He had turned to examine the water-colour sketch—a rustic inn, a honeysuckle arbour, a river in front; a boat yonder—just begun.

"I know the spot!" he cried. "Did you make the sketch of it?"

"I? no; it is hers—my pupil's—my adopted child's." Lionel's dark eyes turned to Lady Montfort's wistfully, inquiringly; they asked what his lips could not presume to ask. "Your adopted child—what is she?—who?"

As if answering to the eyes, Lady Montfort said: "Wait here a moment; I will go for her."

She left him, descended the stairs into the garden, joined George Morley and his companion; took aside the former, whispered him, then drawing the arm of the latter within her own, led her back into the room, while George Morley remained in the garden, throwing himself on a bench, and gazing on the stars as they now came forth, fast and frequent, though one by one.



CHAPTER XXV.

"Quem Fors dierum cunque dabit Lucro appone."—HORAT.

Lionel stood, expectant, in the centre of the room, and as the two female forms entered, the lights were full upon their faces. That younger face—it is she—it is she, the unforgotten—the long-lost. Instinctively, as if no years had rolled between—as if she were still the little child, he the boy who had coveted such a sister—he sprang forward and opened his arms, and as suddenly halted, dropped the arms to, his side, blushing, confused, abashed. She! that vagrant child!—she! that form so elegant—that great peeress's pupil—adopted daughter, she the poor wandering Sophy! She!—impossible!

But her eyes, at first downcast, are now fixed on him. She, too, starts—not forward, but in recoil; she, too, raises her arms, not to open, but to press them to her breast; and she, too, as suddenly checks an impulse, and stands, like him, blushing, confused, abashed.

"Yes," said Caroline Montfort, drawing Sophy nearer to her breast, "yes, you will both forgive me for the surprise. Yes, you do see before you, grown up to become the pride of those who cherish her, that Sophy who—"

"Sophy!" cried Lionel advancing; "it is so, then! I knew you were no stroller's grandchild."

Sophy drew up: "I am, I am his grandchild, and as proud to be so as I was then."

"Pardon me, pardon me; I meant to say that he too was not what he seemed. You forgive me," extending his hand, and Sophy's soft hand fell into his forgivingly.

"But he lives? is well? is here? is—" Sophy burst into tears, and Lady Montfort made a sign to Lionel to go into the garden, and leave them. Reluctantly and dizzily, as one in a dream, he obeyed, leaving the vagrant's grandchild to be soothed in the fostering arms of her whom, an hour or two ago, he knew but by the titles of her rank and the reputation of her pride.

It was not many minutes before Lady Montfort rejoined him.

"You touched unawares," said she, "upon the poor child's most anxious cause of sorrow. Her grandfather; for whom her affection is so sensitively keen, has disappeared. I will speak of that later; and if you wish, you shall be taken into our consultations. But—" she paused, looked into his face-open, loyal face, face of gentleman—with heart of man in its eyes, soul of man on its brow; face formed to look up to the stars which now lighted it—and laying her hand lightly on his shoulder, resumed with hesitating voice: "but I feel like a culprit in asking you what, nevertheless, I must ask, as an imperative condition, if your visits here are to be renewed—if your intimacy here is to be established. And unless you comply with that condition, come no more; we cannot confide in each other."

"Oh, Lady Montfort, impose any condition. I promise beforehand."

"Not beforehand. The condition is this: inviolable secrecy. You will not mention to any one your visits here; your introduction to me; your discovery of the stroller's grandchild in my adopted daughter."

"Not to Mr. Darrell?"

"To him least of all; but this I add, it is for Mr. Darrell's sake that I insist on such concealment; and I trust the concealment will not be long protracted."

"For Mr. Darrell's sake?"

"For the sake of his happiness," cried Lady Montfort, clasping her hands. "My debt to him is larger far than yours; and in thus appealing to you, I scheme to pay back a part of it. Do you trust me?"

"I do, I do."

And from that evening Lionel Haughton became the constant visitor in that house.

Two or three days afterwards Colonel Morley, quitting England for a German Spa at which he annually recruited himself for a few weeks, relieved Lionel from the embarrassment of any questions which that shrewd observer might otherwise have addressed to him. London itself was now empty. Lionel found a quiet lodging in the vicinity of Twickenham. And when his foot passed along the shady lane through yon wicket gate into that region of turf and flowers, he felt as might have felt that famous Minstrel of Ercildoun, when, blessed with the privilege to enter Fairyland at will, the Rhymer stole to the grassy hillside, and murmured the spell that unlocks the gates of Oberon,



BOOK VIII.



CHAPTER I.

"A LITTLE FIRE BURNS UP A GREAT DEAL OF CORN."—OLD PROVERB.

Guy Darrell resumed the thread of solitary life at Fawley with a calm which was deeper in its gloom than it had been before. The experiment of return to the social world had failed. The resolutions which had induced the experiment were finally renounced. Five years nearer to death, and the last hope that had flitted across the narrowing passage to the grave, fallen like a faithless torch from his own hand, and trodden out by his own foot.

It was peculiarly in the nature of Darrell to connect his objects with posterity—to regard eminence in the Present but as a beacon-height from which to pass on to the Future the name he had taken from the Past. All his early ambition, sacrificing pleasure to toil, had placed its goal at a distance, remote from the huzzas of bystanders; and Ambition halted now, baffled and despairing. Childless, his line would perish with himself—himself, who had so vaunted its restoration in the land! His genius was childless also—it would leave behind it no offspring of the brain. By toil he had amassed ample wealth; by talent he had achieved a splendid reputation. But the reputation was as perishable as the wealth. Let a half-century pass over his tomb, and nothing would be left to speak of the successful lawyer the applauded orator, save traditional anecdotes, a laudatory notice in contemporaneous memoirs—perhaps, at most, quotations of eloquent sentences lavished on forgotten cases and obsolete debates—shreds and fragments of a great intellect, which another half-century would sink without a bubble into the depths of Time. He had enacted no laws—he had administered no state—he had composed no books. Like the figure on a clock, which adorns the case and has no connection with the movement, he, so prominent an ornament to time, had no part in its works. Removed, the eye would miss him for a while; but a nation's literature or history was the same, whether with him or without. Some with a tithe of his abilities have the luck to fasten their names to things that endure; they have been responsible for measures they did not not invent, and which, for good or evil, influence long generations. They have written volumes out of which a couplet of verse, a period in prose, may cling to the rock of ages, as a shell that survives a deluge. But the orator, whose effects are immediate—who enthralls his audience in proportion as he nicks the hour—who, were he speaking like Burke what, apart from the subject-matter, closet students would praise, must, like Burke, thin his audience, and exchange present oratorical success for ultimate intellectual renown—a man, in short, whose oratory is emphatically that of the DEBATER is, like an actor, rewarded with a loud applause and a complete oblivion. Waife on the village stage might win applause no less loud, followed by oblivion not more complete.

Darrell was not blind to the brevity of his fame. In his previous seclusion he had been resigned to that conviction—now it saddened him. Then, unconfessed by himself, the idea that he might yet reappear in active life, and do something which the world would not willingly let die, had softened the face of that tranquil Nature from which he must soon now pass out of reach and sight. On the tree of Time he was a leaf already sear upon the bough—not an inscription graven into the rind.

Ever slow to yield to weak regrets—ever seeking to combat his own enemies within—Darrell said to himself one night, while Fairthorn's flute was breathing an air of romance through the melancholy walls: "Is it too late yet to employ this still busy brain upon works that will live when I am dust, and make Posterity supply the heir that fails to my house?"

He shut himself up with immortal authors—he meditated on the choice of a theme; his knowledge was wide, his taste refined;—words!—he could not want words! Why should he not write? Alas; why indeed?—He who has never been a writer in his youth, can no more be a writer in his age than he can be a painter—a musician. What! not write a book! Oh, yes—as he may paint a picture or set a song. But a writer, in the emphatic sense of the word—a writer as Darrell was an orator—oh, no! And, least of all, will he be a writer if he has been an orator by impulse and habit—an orator too happily gifted to require, and too laboriously occupied to resort to, the tedious aids of written preparation—an orator as modern life forms orators—not, of course, an orator like those of the classic world, who elaborated sentences before delivery, and who, after delivery, polished each extemporaneous interlude into rhetorical exactitude and musical perfection. And how narrow the range of compositions to a man burdened already by a grave reputation! He cannot have the self-abandonment—he cannot venture the headlong charge—with which Youth flings the reins to genius, and dashes into the ranks of Fame. Few and austere his themes—fastidious and hesitating his taste. Restricted are the movements of him who walks for the first time into the Forum of Letters with the purple hem on his senatorial toga. Guy Darrell, at his age, entering among authors as a novice!—he, the great lawyer, to whom attorneys would have sent no briefs had he been suspected of coquetting with a muse,—he, the great orator who had electrified audiences in proportion to the sudden effects which distinguish oral inspiration from written eloquence—he achieve now, in an art which his whole life had neglected, any success commensurate to his contemporaneous repute;—how unlikely! But a success which should outlive that repute, win the "everlasting inheritance" which could alone have nerved him to adequate effort—how impossible! He could not himself comprehend why, never at a loss for language felicitously opposite or richly ornate when it had but to flow from his thought to his tongue, nor wanting ease, even eloquence, in epistolary correspondence confidentially familiar—he should find words fail ideas, and ideas fail words, the moment his pen became a wand that conjured up the Ghost of the dread Public! The more copious his thoughts, the more embarrassing their selection; the more exquisite his perception of excellence in others, the more timidly frigid his efforts at faultless style. It would be the same with the most skilful author, if the Ghost of the Public had not long since ceased to haunt him. While he writes, the true author's solitude is absolute or peopled at his will. But take an audience from an orator, what is he? He commands the living public—the Ghost of the Public awes himself.

"Surely once," sighed Darrell, as he gave his blurred pages to the flames—"surely once I had some pittance of the author's talent, and have spent it upon lawsuits!"

The author's talent, no doubt, Guy Darrell once had—the author's temperament never. What is the author's temperament? Too long a task to define. But without it a man may write a clever book, a useful book, a book that may live a year, ten years, fifty years. He will not stand out to distant ages a representative of the age that rather lived in him than he in it. The author's temperament is that which makes him an integral, earnest, original unity, distinct from all before and all that may succeed him. And as a Father of the Church has said that the consciousness of individual being is the sign of immortality, not granted to the inferior creatures—so it is in this individual temperament one and indivisible, and in the intense conviction of it, more than in all the works it may throw off, that the author becomes immortal. Nay, his works may perish like those of Orpheus or Pythagoras; but he himself, in his name, in the footprint of his being, remains, like Orpheus or Pythagoras, undestroyed, indestructible.

Resigning literature, the Solitary returned to Science. There he was more at home. He had cultivated science, in his dazzling academical career, with ardour and success; he had renewed the study, on his first retirement to Fawley, as a distraction from tormenting memories or unextin guished passions. He now for the first time regarded the absorbing abstruse occupation as a possible source of fame. To be one in the starry procession of those sons of light who have solved a new law in the statute-book of heaven! Surely a grand ambition, not unbecoming to his years and station, and pleasant in its labours to a man who loved Nature's outward scenery with poetic passion, and had studied her inward mysteries with a sage's minute research. Science needs not the author's art—she rejects its gracess—he recoils with a shudder from its fancies. But Science requires in the mind of the discoverer a limpid calm. The lightnings that reveal Diespiter must flash in serene skies. No clouds store that thunder

"Quo bruta tellus, et vaga flumina, Quo Styx, et invisi horrida Taenari Sedes, Atlanteusque finis Concutitur!"

So long as you take science only as a distraction, science will not lead you to discovery. And from some cause or other, Guy Darrell was more unquiet and perturbed in his present than in his past seclusion. Science this time failed even to distract. In the midst of august meditations—of close experiment—some haunting angry thought from the far world passed with rude shadow between Intellect and Truth—the heart eclipsed the mind. The fact is, that Darrell's genius was essentially formed for Action. His was the true orator's temperament, with the qualities that belong to it—the grasp of affairs—the comprehension of men and states—the constructive, administrative faculties. In such career, and in such career alone, could he have developed all his powers, and achieved an imperishable name. Gradually as science lost its interest, he retreated from all his former occupations, and would wander for long hours over the wild unpopulated landscapes round him. As if it were his object to fatigue the body, and in that fatigue tire out the restless brain, he would make his gun the excuse for rambles from sunrise to twilight over the manors he had purchased years ago, lying many miles off from Fawley. There are times when a man who has passed his life in cultivating his mind finds that the more he can make the physical existence predominate, the more he can lower himself to the rude vigour of the gamekeeper, or his day-labourer—why, the more he can harden his nerves to support the weight of his reflections.

In these rambles he was not always alone. Fairthorn contrived to insinuate himself much more than formerly into his master's habitual companionship. The faithful fellow had missed Darrell so sorely in that long unbroken absence of five years, that on recovering him, Fairthorn seemed resolved to make up for lost time. Departing from his own habits, he would, therefore, lie in wait for Guy Darrell—creeping out of a bramble or bush, like a familiar sprite; and was no longer to be awed away by a curt syllable or a contracted brow. And Darrell, at first submitting reluctantly, and out of compassionate kindness to the flute-player's obtrusive society, became by degrees to welcome and relax in it. Fairthorn knew the great secrets of his life. To Fairthorn alone on all earth could he speak with out reserve of one name and of one sorrow. Speaking to Fairthorn was like talking to himself, or to his pointers, or to his favourite doe, upon which last he bestowed a new collar, with an inscription that implied more of the true cause that had driven him a second time to the shades of Fawley than he would have let out to Alban Morley or even to Lionel Haughton. Alban was too old for that confidence—Lionel much too young. But the Musician, like Art itself, was of no age; and if ever the gloomy master unbent his outward moodiness and secret spleen in any approach to gaiety, it was in a sort of saturnine playfulness to this grotesque, grown-up infant. They cheered each other, and they teased each other. Stalking side by side over the ridged fallows, Darrell would sometimes pour forth his whole soul, as a poet does to his muse; and at Fairthorn's abrupt interruption or rejoinder, turn round on him with fierce objurgation or withering sarcasm, or what the flute-player abhorred more than all else, a truculent quotation from Horace, which drove Fairthorn away into some vanishing covert or hollow, out of which Darrell had to entice him, sure that, in return, Fairthorn would take a sly occasion to send into his side a vindictive prickle. But as the two came home in the starlight, the dogs dead beat and poor Fairthorn too,—ten to one but what the musician was leaning all his weight on his master's nervous arm, and Darrell was looking with tender kindness in the face of the SOMEONE left to lean upon him still.

One evening, as they were sitting together in the library, the two hermits, each in his corner, and after a long silence, the flute-player said abruptly

"I have been thinking—"

"Thinking!" quoth Darrell, with his mechanical irony; "I am sorry for you. Try not to do so again."

FAIRTHORN.—"Your poor dear father—"

DARRELL (wincing, startled, and expectant of a prickle).—"Eh? my father—"

FAIRTHORN.—"Was a great antiquary. How it would have pleased him could he have left a fine collection of antiquities as an heirloom to the nation!—his name thus preserved for ages, and connected with the studies of his life. There are the Elgin Marbles. The parson was talking to me yesterday of a new Vernon Gallery; why not in the British Museum an everlasting Darrell room? Plenty to stock it mouldering yonder in the chambers which you will never finish."

"My dear Dick," Said Darrell, starting up, "give me your hand. What a brilliant thought! I could do nothing else to preserve my dear father's name. Eureka! You are right. Set the carpenters at work to-morrow. Remove the boards; open the chambers; we will inspect their stores, and select what would worthily furnish 'A Darrell Room.' Perish Guy Darrell the lawyer! Philip Darrell the antiquary at least shall live!"

It is marvellous with what charm Fairthorn's lucky idea seized upon Darrell's mind. The whole of the next day he spent in the forlorn skeleton of the unfinished mansion slowly decaying beside his small and homely dwelling. The pictures, many of which were the rarest originals in early Flemish and Italian art, were dusted with tender care, and hung from hasty nails upon the bare ghastly walls. Delicate ivory carvings, wrought by the matchless hand of Cellini-early Florentine bronzes, priceless specimens of Raffaele ware and Venetian glass—the precious trifles, in short, which the collector of mediaeval curiosities amasses for his heirs to disperse amongst the palaces of kings and the cabinets of nations—were dragged again to unfamiliar light. The invaded sepulchral building seemed a very Pompeii of the Cinque Cento. To examine, arrange, methodise, select for national purposes, such miscellaneous treasures would be the work of weeks. For easier access, Darrell caused a slight hasty passage to be thrown over the gap between the two edifices. It ran from the room nicked into the gables of the old house, which, originally fitted up for scientific studies, now became his habitual apartment, into the largest of the uncompleted chambers which had been designed for the grand reception-gallery of the new building. Into the pompous gallery thus made contiguous to his monk-like cell, he gradually gathered the choicest specimens of his collection. The damps were expelled by fires on grateless hearthstones; sunshine admitted from windows now for the first time exchanging boards for glass; rough iron sconces, made at the nearest forge, were thrust into the walls, and sometimes lighted at night-Darrell and Fairthorn walking arm-in-arm along the unpolished floors, in company with Holbein's Nobles, Perugino's Virgins. Some of that highbred company displaced and banished the next day, as repeated inspection made the taste more rigidly exclusive. Darrell had found object, amusement, occupation—frivolous if Compared with those lenses, and glasses, and algebraical scrawls which had once whiled lonely hours in the attic-room hard by; but not frivolous even to the judgment of the austerest sage, if that sage had not reasoned away his heart. For here it was not Darrell's taste that was delighted; it was Darrell's heart that, ever hungry, had found food. His heart was connecting those long-neglected memorials of an ambition baffled and relinquished—here with a nation, there with his father's grave! How his eyes sparkled! how his lip smiled! Nobody would have guessed it—none of us know each other; least of all do we know the interior being of those whom we estimate by public repute;—but what a world of simple, fond affection lay coiled and wasted in that proud man's solitary breast!



CHAPTER II.

THE LEARNED COMPUTE THAT SEVEN HUNDRED AND SEVEN MILLIONS OF MILLIONS OF VIBRATIONS HAVE PENETRATED THE EYE BEFORE THE EYE CAN DISTINGUISH THE TINTS OF A VIOLET. WHAT PHILOSOPHY CAN CALCULATE THE VIBRATIONS OF THE HEART BEFORE IT CAN DISTINGUISH THE COLOURS OF LOVE?

While Guy Darrell thus passed his hours within the unfinished fragments of a dwelling builded for posterity, and amongst the still relics of remote generations, Love and Youth were weaving their warm eternal idyll on the sunny lawns by the gliding river.

There they are, Love and Youth, Lionel and Sophy, in the arbour round which her slight hands have twined the honeysuckle, fond imitation of that bower endeared by the memory of her earliest holiday—she seated coyly, he on the ground at her feet, as when Titania had watched his sleep. He has been reading to her, the book has fallen from his hand. What book? That volume of poems so unintelligibly obscure to all but the dreaming young, who are so unintelligibly obscure to themselves. But to the merit of those poems, I doubt if even George did justice. It is not true, I believe, that they are not durable. Some day or other, when all the jargon so feelingly denounced by Colonel Morley about "esthetics," and "objective," and "subjective," has gone to its long home, some critic who can write English will probably bring that poor little volume fairly before the public; and, with all its manifold faults, it will take a place in the affections, not of one single generation of the young, but—everlasting, ever-dreaming, ever-growing youth. But you and I, reader, have no other interest in these poems, except this—that they were written by the brother-in-law of that whimsical, miserly Frank Vance, who perhaps, but for such a brother-in-law, would never have gone through the labour by which he has cultivated the genius that achieved his fame; and if he had not cultivated that genius, he might never have known Lionel; and if he had never known Lionel, Lionel might never perhaps have gone to the Surrey village, in which he saw the Phenomenon: And, to push farther still that Voltaireian philosophy of ifs—if either Lionel or Frank Vance had not been so intimately associated in the minds of Sophy and Lionel with the golden holiday on the beautiful river, Sophy and Lionel might not have thought so much of those poems; and if they had not thought so much of those poems, there might not have been between them that link of poetry without which the love of two young people is a sentiment, always very pretty it is true, but much too commonplace to deserve special commemoration in a work so uncommonly long as this is likely to be. And thus it is clear that Frank Vance is not a superfluous and episodical personage amongst the characters of this history, but, however indirectly, still essentially, one of those beings without whom the author must have given a very different answer to the question, "What will he do with it?"