What Will He Do with It? Part 55

She married--oh! so genteelly!--a young man, very well born, who had wooed her before my father died. He had the villany to remain constant when she had not a farthing, and he was dependent on distant relations, and his own domains in Parna.s.sus. The wretch was a poet! So they married. They spent their honeymoon genteelly, I dare say. His relations cut him. Parna.s.sus paid no rents. He went abroad. Such heart-rending letters from her. They were dest.i.tute. How I worked! how I raged! But how could I maintain her and her husband too, mere child that I was? No matter. They are dead now, both; all dead for whose sake I first ground colours and saved halfpence. And Frank Vance is a stingy, selfish bachelor. Never revive this dull subject again, or I shall borrow a crown from you and cut you dead. Waiter, ho!--the bill. I'll just go round to the stables, and see the horse put to."

As the friends re-entered London, Vance said, "Set me down anywhere in Piccadilly; I will walk home. You, I suppose, of course, are staying with your mother in Gloucester Place?"

"No," said Lionel, rather embarra.s.sed; "Colonel Morley, who acts for me as if he were my guardian, took a lodging for me in Chesterfield Street, Mayfair. My hours, I fear, would ill suit my dear mother. Only in town two days; and, thanks to Morley, my table is already covered with invitations."

"Yet you gave me one day, generous friend!"

"You the second day, my mother the first. But there are three b.a.l.l.s before me to-night. Come home with me, and smoke your cigar while I dress."

"No; but I will at least light my cigar in your hall, prodigal!"

Lionel now stopped at his lodging. The groom, who served him also as valet, was in waiting at the door. "A note for you, sir, from Colonel Morley,--just come." Lionel hastily opened it, and read,

MY DEAR HAUGHTON,--Mr. Darrell has suddenly arrived in London. Keep yourself free all to-morrow, when, no doubt, he will see you. I am hurrying off to him.

Yours in haste, A. V. M.

CHAPTER III.

Once more Guy Darrell.

Guy Darrell was alone: a lofty room in a large house on the first floor,--his own house in Carlton Gardens, which he had occupied during his brief and brilliant parliamentary career; since then, left contemptuously to the care of a house agent, to be let by year or by season, it had known various tenants of an opulence and station suitable to its s.p.a.ce and site. Dinners and concerts, routs and b.a.l.l.s, had a.s.sembled the friends and jaded the spirits of many a gracious host and smiling hostess. The tenure of one of these temporary occupants had recently expired; and, ere the agent had found another, the long absent owner dropped down into its silenced halls as from the clouds, without other establishment than his old servant Mills and the woman in charge of the house. There, as in a caravansery, the traveller took his rest, stately and desolate. Nothing so comfortless as one of those large London houses all to one's self. In long rows against the walls stood the empty fauteuils. Spectral from the gilded ceiling hung lightless chandeliers.--The furniture, pompous, but worn by use and faded by time, seemed mementos of departed revels. When you return to your house in the country--no matter how long the absence, no matter how decayed by neglect the friendly chambers may be, if it has only been deserted in the meanwhile (not let to new races, who, by their own s.h.i.+fting dynasties, have supplanted the rightful lord, and half-effaced his memorials)--the walls may still greet you forgivingly, the character of Home be still there. You take up again the thread of a.s.sociations which had, been suspended, not snapped. But it is otherwise with a house in cities, especially in our fast-living London, where few houses descend from father to son,--where the t.i.tle-deeds are rarely more than those of a purchased lease for a term of years, after which your property quits you. A house in London, which your father never entered, in which no elbow-chair, no old-fas.h.i.+oned work-table, recall to you the kind smile of a mother; a house that you have left as you leave an inn, let to people whose names you scarce know, with as little respect for your family records as you have for theirs,--when you return after a long interval of years to a house like that, you stand, as stood Darrell, a forlorn stranger under your own roof-tree. What cared he for those who had last gathered round those hearths with their chill steely grates, whose forms had reclined on those formal couches, whose feet had worn away the gloss from those costly carpets? Histories in the lives of many might be recorded within those walls. "Lovers there had breathed their first vows; bridal feasts had been held; babes had crowed in the arms of proud young mothers; politicians there had been raised into ministers; ministers there had fallen back into independent members;" through those doors corpses had been borne forth to relentless vaults. For these races and their records what cared the owner? Their writing was not on the walls. Sponged out, as from a slate, their reckonings with Time; leaving dim, here and there, some chance scratch of his own, blurred and bygone.

Leaning against the mantelpiece, Darrell gazed round the room with a vague wistful look, as if seeking to conjure up a.s.sociations that might link the present hour to that past life which had slipped away elsewhere; and his profile, reflected on the mirror behind, pale and mournful, seemed like that ghost of himself which his memory silently evoked.

The man is but little altered externally since we saw him last, however inly changed since he last stood on those unwelcoming floors; the form still retained the same vigour and symmetry,--the same unspeakable dignity of mien and bearing; the same thoughtful bend of the proud neck,--so distinct, in its elastic rebound, from the stoop of debility or age, thick as ever the rich ma.s.s of dark-brown hair, though, when in the impatience of some painful thought his hand swept the loose curls from his forehead, the silver threads might now be seen shooting here and there,--vanis.h.i.+ng almost as soon as seen. No, whatever the baptismal register may say to the contrary, that man is not old,--not even elderly; in the deep of that clear gray eye light may be calm, but in calm it is vivid; not a ray, sent from brain or from heart, is yet flickering down. On the whole, however, there is less composure than of old in his mien and bearing; less of that resignation which seemed to say, "I have done with the substances of life." Still there was gloom, but it was more broken and restless. Evidently that human breast was again admitting, or forcing itself to court, human hopes, human objects.

Returning to the substances of life, their movement was seen in the shadows which, when they wrap us round at remoter distance, seem to lose their trouble as they gain their width. He broke from his musing att.i.tude with an abrupt angry movement, as if shaking off thoughts which displeased him, and gathering his arms tightly to his breast, in a gesture peculiar to himself, walked to and fro the room, murmuring inaudibly. The door opened; he turned quickly, and with an evident sense of relief, for his face brightened. "Alban, my dear Alban!"

"Darrell! old friend! old school-friend! dear, dear Guy Darrell!" The two Englishmen stood, hands tightly clasped in each other, in true English greeting, their eyes moistening with remembrances that carried them back to boyhood.

Alban was the first to recover self-possession; and, when the friends had seated themselves, he surveyed Darrell's countenance deliberately, and said, "So little change!--wonderful! What is your secret?"

"Suspense from life,--hibernating. But you beat me; you have been spending life, yet seem as rich in it as when we parted."

"No; I begin to decry the present and laud the past; to read with gla.s.ses, to decide from prejudice, to recoil from change, to find sense in twaddle, to know the value of health from the fear to lose it; to feel an interest in rheumatism, an awe of bronchitis; to tell anecdotes, and to wear flannel. To you in strict confidence I disclose the truth: I am no longer twenty-five. You laugh; this is civilized talk: does it not refresh you after the gibberish you must have chattered in Asia Minor?"

Darrell might have answered in the affirmative with truth. What man, after long years of solitude, is not refreshed by talk, however trivial, that recalls to him the gay time of the world he remembered in his young day,--and recalls it to him on the lips of a friend in youth! But Darrell said nothing; only he settled himself in his chair with a more cheerful ease, and inclined his relaxing brows with a nod of encouragement or a.s.sent.

Colonel Morley continued. "But when did you arrive? whence? How long do you stay here? What are your plans?"

DARRELL.--"Caesar could not be more laconic. When arrived? this evening.

Whence? Ouzelford. How long do I stay? uncertain. What are my plans? let us discuss them."

COLONEL MORLEY.--"With all my heart. You have plans, then?--a good sign.

Animals in hibernation form none."

DARRELL (putting aside the lights on the table, so as to leave, his face in shade, and looking towards the floor as he speaks).--"For the last five years I have struggled hard to renew interest in mankind, reconnect myself with common life and its healthful objects. Between Fawley and London I desired to form a magnetic medium. I took rather a vast one,--nearly all the rest of the known world. I have visited both Americas, either end. All Asia have I ransacked, and pierced as far into Africa as traveller ever went in search of Timbuctoo. But I have sojourned also, at long intervals, at least they seemed long to me,--in the gay capitals of Europe (Paris excepted); mixed, too, with the gayest; hired palaces, filled them with guests; feasted and heard music.

'Guy Darrell,' said I, 'shake off the rust of years: thou hadst no youth while young,--be young now. A holiday may restore thee to wholesome work, as a holiday restores the wearied school-boy.'"

COLONEL MORLEY.--"I comprehend; the experiment succeeded?"

DARRELL.--"I don't know: not yet; but it may. I am here, and I intend to stay. I would not go to a hotel for a single day, lest my resolution should fail me. I have thrown myself into this castle of care without even a garrison. I hope to hold it. Help me to man it. In a word, and without metaphor, I am here with the design of re-entering London life."

COLONEL MORLEY.--"I am so glad. Hearty congratulations! How rejoiced all the Viponts will be! Another 'CRISIS' is at hand. You have seen the newspapers regularly, of course: the state of the country interests you.

You say that you come from Ouzelford, the town you once represented. I guess you will re-enter Parliament; you have but to say the word."

DARRELL.--"Parliament! No. I received, while abroad, so earnest a request from my old const.i.tuents to lay the foundation-stone of a new Town-Hall, in which they are much interested; and my obligations to them have been so great that I could not refuse. I wrote to fix the day as soon as I had resolved to return to England, making a condition that I should be spared the infliction of a public dinner, and landed just in time to keep my appointment; reached Ouzelford early this morning, went through the ceremony, made a short speech, came on at once to London, not venturing to diverge to Fawley (which is not very far from Ouzelford), lest, once there again, I should not have strength to leave it; and here I am." Darrell paused, then repeated, in brisk emphatic tone, "Parliament? No. Labour? No. Fellow-man, I am about to confess to you: I would s.n.a.t.c.h back some days of youth,--a wintry likeness of youth, better than none. Old friend, let us amuse ourselves! When I was working hard, hard, hard! it was you who would say: 'Come forth, be amused,'--you! happy b.u.t.terfly that you were! Now, I say to you, 'Show me this flaunting town that you know so well; initiate me into the joys of polite pleasures, social commune,

"'Dulce mihi furere est amico."

You have amus.e.m.e.nts,--let me share them.'"

"Faith," quoth the Colonel, crossing his legs, "you come late in the day! Amus.e.m.e.nts cease to amuse at last. I have tried all, and begin to be tired. I have had my holiday, exhausted its sports; and you, coming from books and desk fresh into the playground, say, 'Football and leapfrog.' Alas! my poor friend, why did not you come sooner?"

DARRELL.--"One word, one question. You have made EASE a philosophy and a system; no man ever did so with more felicitous grace: nor, in following pleasure, have you parted company with conscience and shame. A fine gentleman ever, in honour as in elegance. Well, are you satisfied with your choice of life? Are you happy?"

"Happy! who is? Satisfied, perhaps."

"Is there any one you envy,--whose choice, other than your own, you would prefer?"

"Certainly."

"Who?"

"You."

"I!" said Darrell, opening his eyes with unaffected amaze. "I! envy me!

prefer my choice!"

COLONEL MORLEY (peevishly).--"Without doubt. You have had gratified ambition, a great career. Envy you! who would not? Your own objects in life fulfilled: you coveted distinction,--you won it; fortune,--your wealth is immense; the restoration of your name and lineage from obscurity and humiliation,--are not name and lineage again written in the _Libro d'oro_? What king would not hail you as his counsellor? What senate not open its ranks to admit you as a chief? What house, though the haughtiest in the land, would not accept your alliance? And withal, you stand before me stalwart and unbowed, young blood still in your veins. Ungrateful man, who would not change lots with Guy Darrell? Fame, fortune, health, and, not to flatter you, a form and presence that would be remarked, though you stood in that black frock by the side of a monarch in his coronation robes."

DARRELL.--"You have turned my question against myself with a kindliness of intention that makes me forgive your belief in my vanity. Pa.s.s on,--or rather pa.s.s back; you say you have tried all in life that distracts or sweetens. Not so, lone bachelor; you have not tried wedlock. Has not that been your mistake?"

COLONEL MORLEY.--"Answer for yourself. You have tried it." The words were scarce out of his mouth ere he repented the retort; for Darrell started as if stung to the quick; and his brow, before serene, his lip, before playful, grew, the one darkly troubled, the other tightly compressed. "Pardon me," faltered out the friend.

DARRELL.--"Oh, yes! I brought it on myself. What stuff we have been talking! Tell me the news, not political, any other. But first, your report of young Haughton. Cordial thanks for all your kindness to him.

You write me word that he is much improved,--most likeable; you add, that at Paris he became the rage, that in London you are sure he will be extremely popular. Be it so, if for his own sake. Are you quite sure that it is not for the expectations which I come here to disperse?"

COLONEL MORLEY.--"Much for himself, I am certain; a little, perhaps, because--whatever he thinks, and I say to the contrary--people seeing no other heir to your property--"

"I understand," interrupted Darrell, quickly. "But he does not nurse those expectations? he will not be disappointed?"

COLONEL MORLEY.--"Verily I believe that, apart from his love for you and a delicacy of sentiment that would recoil from planting hopes of wealth in the graves of benefactors, Lionel Haughton would prefer carving his own fortunes to all the ingots hewed out of California by another's hand and bequeathed by another's will."

DARRELL.--"I am heartily glad to hear and to trust you."

COLONEL MORLEY.--"I gather from what you say that you are here with the intention to--to--"