BOOK VI. 

CHAPTER I. 

 Etchings of Hyde Park in the month of June, which, if this history escapes those villains the trunk-makers, may be of inestimable value to unborn antiquarians. --Characters, long absent, reappear and give some account of themselves. 

Five years have passed away since this history opened. It is the monthof June once more, --June, which clothes our London in all its glory, fills its languid ballrooms with living flowers, and its stony causewayswith human butterflies. It is about the hour of six P. M. The lounge inHyde Park is crowded; along the road that skirts the Serpentine crawl thecarriages one after the other; congregate by the rails the lazy lookers-on, --lazy in attitude, but with active eyes, and tongues sharpened on thewhetstone of scandal, --the Scaligers of club windows airing theirvocabulary in the Park. Slowly saunter on foot idlers of all degrees inthe hierarchy of London idlesse: dandies of established-fame; youthfultyros in their first season. Yonder in the Ride, forms less inanimateseem condemned to active exercise; young ladies doing penance in acanter; old beaux at hard labour in a trot. Sometimes, by a morethoughtful brow, a still brisker pace, you recognize a busy member ofthe Imperial Parliament, who, advised by physicians to be as much onhorseback as possible, snatches an hour or so in the interval between theclose of his Committee and the interest of the Debate, and shirks theopening speech of a well-known bore. Among such truant lawgivers (griefit is to say it) may be seen that once model member, Sir GregoryStollhead. Grim dyspepsia seizing on him at last, "relaxation from hisduties" becomes the adequate punishment for all his sins. Solitary herides, and communing with himself, yawns at every second. Upon chairsbeneficently located under the trees towards the north side of the walkare interspersed small knots and coteries in repose. There you mightsee the Ladies Prymme, still the Ladies Prymme, --Janet and Wilhelmina;Janet has grown fat, Wilhelmina thin. But thin or fat, they are noless Prymmes. They do not lack male attendants; they are girls of highfashion, with whom young inen think it a distinction to be seen talking;of high principle, too, and high pretensions (unhappily for themselves, they are co-heiresses), by whom young men under the rank of earls neednot fear to be artfully entrapped into "honourable intentions. " Theycoquet majestically, but they never flirt; they exact devotion, but theydo not ask in each victim a sacrifice on the horns of the altar; theywill never give their hands where they do not give their hearts; andbeing ever afraid that they are courted for their money, they willnever give their hearts save to wooers who have much more money thanthemselves. Many young men stop to do passing homage to the LadiesPrymme: some linger to converse; safe young men, --they are all youngersons. Farther on, Lady Frost and Mr. Crampe, the wit, sit amicably sideby side, pecking at each other with sarcastic beaks; occasionallydesisting, in order to fasten nip and claw upon that common enemy, thepassing friend! The Slowes, a numerous family, but taciturn, sit bythemselves; bowed to much, accosted rarely. 

Note that man of good presence, somewhere about thirty, or a year or twomore, who, recognized by most of the loungers, seems not at home in thelounge. He has passed by the various coteries just described, made hisobeisance to the Ladies Prymme, received an icy epigram from Lady Frost, and a laconic sneer from Mr. Crampe, and exchanged silent bows with sevensilent Slowes. He has wandered on, looking high in the air, but stilllooking for some one not in the air, and evidently disappointed in hissearch, comes to a full stop at length, takes off his hat, wipes hisbrow, utters a petulant "Prr--r--pshaw!" and seeing, a little in thebackground, the chairless shade of a thin, emaciated, dusty tree, thitherhe retires, and seats himself with as little care whether there to seathimself be the right thing in the right place, as if in the honeysucklearbour of a village inn. "It serves me right, " said he to himself: "aprecocious villain bursts in upon me, breaks my day, makes an appointmentto meet me here, in these very walks, ten minutes before six; decoys mewith the promise of a dinner at Putney, --room looking on the river andfried flounders. I have the credulity to yield: I derange my habits;I leave my cool studio; I put off my easy blouse; I imprison my freebornthroat in a cravat invented by the Thugs; the dog-days are at hand, and Iwalk rashly over scorching pavements in a black frock-coat and a brimlesshat; I annihilate 3s. 6d. In a pair of kid gloves; I arrive at this hauntof spleen; I run the gauntlet of Frosts, Slowes, and Prymmes: and mytraitor fails me! Half-past six, --not a sign of him! and the dinner atPutney, --fried flounders? Dreams! Patience, five minutes more; if thenhe comes not, breach for life between him and me! Ah, voila! there hecomes, the laggard! But how those fine folks are catching at him! Hashe asked them also to dinner at Putney, and do they care for friedflounders?"

The soliloquist's eye is on a young man, much younger than himself, whois threading the motley crowd with a light quick step, but is compelledto stop at each moment to interchange a word of welcome, a shake of thehand. Evidently he has already a large acquaintance; evidently he ispopular, on good terms with the world and himself. What free grace inhis bearing! what gay good-humour in his smile! Powers above! LadyWilhelmina surely blushes as she returns his bow. He has passed LadyFrost unblighted; the Slowes evince emotion, at least the female Slowes, as he shoots by them with that sliding bow. He looks from side to side, with the rapid glance of an eye in which light seems all dance andsparkle: he sees the soliloquist under the meagre tree; the pacequickens, the lips part half laughing. 

"Don't scold, Vance. I am late, I know; but I did not make allowance forinterceptions. "

"Body o' me, interceptions! For an absentee just arrived in London, youseem to have no lack of friends. "

"Friends made in Paris and found again here at every corner, likepleasant surprises, --but no friend so welcome and dear as Frank Vance. "

"Sensible of the honour, O Lionello the Magnificent. Verily you are /bonprince!/ The Houses of Valois and of Medici were always kind to artists. But whither would you lead me? Back into that treadmill? Thank you, humbly; no. "

"A crowd in fine clothes is of all mobs the dullest. I can lookundismayed on the many-headed monster, wild and rampant; but when themany-headed monster buys its hats in Bond Street, and has an eyeglass ateach of its inquisitive eyes, I confess I take fright. Besides, it isnear seven o'clock; Putney not visible, and the flounders not fried!"

"My cab is waiting yonder; we must walk to it: we can keep on the turf, and avoid the throng. But tell me honestly, Vance, do you really disliketo mix in crowds; you, with your fame, dislike the eyes that turn back tolook again, and the lips that respectfully murmur, 'Vance the Painter'?Ah, I always said you would be a great painter, --and in five short yearsyou have soared high. "

"Pooh!" answered Vance, indifferently. "Nothing is pure andunadulterated in London use; not cream, nor cayenne pepper; least of allFame, --mixed up with the most deleterious ingredients. Fame! did youread the 'Times' critique on my pictures in the present Exhibition? Fameindeed Change the subject. Nothing so good as flounders. Ho! is thatyour cab? Superb! Car fit for the 'Grecian youth of talents rare, ' inMr. Enfield's 'Speaker;' horse that seems conjured out of the ElginMarbles. Is he quiet?"

"Not very; but trust to my driving. You may well admire the horse, --present from Darrell, chosen by Colonel Morley. " When the young men hadsettled themselves into the vehicle, Lionel dismissed his groom, and, touching his horse, the animal trotted out briskly. 

"Frank, " said Lionel, shaking his dark curls with a petulant gravity, "your cynical definitions are unworthy that masculine beard. You despisefame! what sheer affectation!

 "'Pulverem Olympicum Collegisse juvat; metaque fervidis Evitata rotis-----'"

"Take care, " cried Vance; "we shall be over. " For Lionel, growingexcited, teased the horse with his whip; and the horse bolting, took thecab within an inch of a water-cart. 

"Fame, fame!" cried Lionel, unheeding the interruption. "What would Inot give to have and to hold it for an hour?" "Hold an eel, lessslippery; a scorpion, less stinging! But--" added Vance, observing hiscompanion's heightened colour--"but, " he added seriously, and with anhonest compunction, "I forgot, you are a soldier, you follow the careerof arms! Never heed what is said on the subject by a querulous painter!The desire of fame may be folly in civilians: in soldiers it is wisdom. Twin-born with the martial sense of honour, it cheers the march; it warmsthe bivouac; it gives music to the whir of the bullet, the roar of theball; it plants hope in the thick of peril; knits rivals with the bondof brothers; comforts the survivor when the brother falls; takes from warits grim aspect of carnage; and from homicide itself extracts lessonsthat strengthen the safeguards to humanity, and perpetuate life tonations. Right: pant for fame; you are a soldier!"

This was one of those bursts of high sentiment from Vance, which, as theywere very rare with him, had the dramatic effect of surprise. Lionellistened to him with a thrilling delight. He could not answer: he wastoo moved. The artist resumed, as the cabriolet now cleared the Park, and rolled safely and rapidly along the road. "I suppose, during thefive years you have spent abroad completing your general education, youhave made little study, or none, of what specially appertains to theprofession you have so recently chosen. "

"You are mistaken there, my dear Vance. If a man's heart be set on athing, he is always studying it. The books I loved best, and mostpondered over, were such as, if they did not administer lessons, suggested hints that might turn to lessons hereafter. In socialintercourse, I never was so pleased as when I could fasten myself to somepractical veteran, --question and cross-examine him. One picks up moreideas in conversation than from books; at least I do. Besides, my ideaof a soldier who is to succeed some day is not that of a mere mechanician-at-arms. See how accomplished most great captains have been. Whatobservers of mankind! what diplomatists! what reasoners! what men ofaction, because men to whom reflection had been habitual before theyacted! How many stores of idea must have gone to the judgment whichhazards the sortie or decides on the retreat!"

"Gently, gently!" cried Vance. "We shall be into that omnibus! Give methe whip, --do; there, a little more to the left, --so. Yes; I am glad tosee such enthusiasm in your profession: 't is half the battle. Hazlittsaid a capital thing, 'The 'prentice who does not consider the Lord Mayorin his gilt coach the greatest man in the world will live to be hanged!'"

"Pish!" said Lionel, catching at the whip. 

VANCE (holding it back). --"No. I apologize. I retract the Lord Mayor:comparisons are odious. I agree with you, nothing like leather. I meannothing like a really great soldier, --Hannibal, and so forth. Cherishthat conviction, my friend: meanwhile, respect human life; there isanother omnibus!"

The danger past, the artist thought it prudent to divert the conversationinto some channel less exciting. 

"Mr. Darrell, of course, consents to your choice of a profession?"

"Consents! approves, encourages. Wrote me such a beautiful letter!what a comprehensive intelligence that man has!"

"Necessarily; since he agrees with you. Where is he now?"

"I have no notion: it is some months since I heard from him. He was thenat Malta, on his return from Asia Minor. "

"So! you have never seen him since he bade you farewell at his old Manor-house?"

"Never. He has not, I believe, been in England. "

"Nor in Paris, where you seem to have chiefly resided. "

"Nor in Paris. Ah, Vance, could I but be of some comfort to him. Nowthat I am older, I think I understand in him much that perplexed me as aboy when we parted. Darrell is one of those men who require a home. Between the great world and solitude, he needs the intermediate filling-up which the life domestic alone supplies: a wife to realize the sweetword helpmate; children, with whose future he could knit his own toilsand his ancestral remembrances. That intermediate space annihilated, the great world and the solitude are left, each frowning on the other. "

"My dear Lionel, you must have lived with very clever people: you aretalking far above your years. "

"Am I? True; I have lived, if not with very clever people, with peoplefar above my years. That is a secret I learned from Colonel Morley, towhom I must present you, --the subtlest intellect under the quietestmanner. Once he said to me, 'Would you throughout life be up to theheight of your century, --always in the prime of man's reason, withoutcrudeness and without decline, --live habitually while young with personsolder, and when old with persons younger, than yourself. '"

"Shrewdly said indeed. I felicitate you on the evident result of themaxim. And so Darrell has no home, --no wife and no children?"

"He has long been a widower; he lost his only son in boyhood, and hisdaughter--did you never hear?"

"No, what?"

"Married so ill--a runaway match--and died many years since, withoutissue. "

"Poor man! It was these afflictions, then, that soured his life, andmade him the hermit or the wanderer?"

"There, " said Lionel, "I am puzzled; for I find that, even after hisson's death and his daughter's unhappy marriage and estrangement fromhim, he was still in Parliament and in full activity of career. Butcertainly he did not long keep it up. It might have been an effort towhich, strong as he is, he felt himself unequal; or, might he have knownsome fresh disappointment, some new sorrow, which the world neverguesses? What I have said as to his family afflictions the world knows. But I think he will marry again. That idea seemed strong in his own mindwhen we parted; he brought it out bluntly, roughly. Colonel Morley isconvinced that he will marry, if but for the sake of an heir. "

VANCE. --"And if so, my poor Lionel, you are ousted of--"

LIONEL (quickly interrupting). --"Hush! Do not say, my dear Vance, do notyou say--you!--one of those low, mean things which, if said to me even bymen for whom I have no esteem, make my ears tingle and my cheek blush. When I think of what Darrell has already done for me, --me who have noclaim on him, --it seems to me as if I must hate the man who insinuates, 'Fear lest your benefactor find a smile at his own hearth, a child of hisown blood; for you may be richer at his death in proportion as his lifeis desolate. '"

VANCE. --"You are a fine young fellow, and I beg your pardon. Take careof that milestone: thank you. But I suspect that at least two-thirds ofthose friendly hands that detained you on the way to me were stretchedout less to Lionel Haughton, a subaltern in the Guards, than to Mr. Darrell's heir presumptive. "

LIONEL. --"That thought sometimes galls me, but it does me good; for itgoads on my desire to make myself some one whom the most worldly wouldnot disdain to know for his own sake. Oh for active service! Oh for asharp campaign! Oh for fair trial how far a man in earnest can grappleFortune to his breast with his own strong hands! You have done so, Vance; you had but your genius and your painter's brush. I have nogenius; but I have a resolve, and resolve is perhaps as sure of its endsas genius. Genius and Resolve have three grand elements in common, --Patience, Hope, and Concentration. "

Vance, more and more surprised, looked hard at Lionel without speaking. Five years of that critical age, from seventeen to twenty-two, spent inthe great capital of Europe; kept from its more dangerous vices partlyby a proud sense of personal dignity, partly by a temperament which, regarding love as an ideal for all tender and sublime emotion, recoiledfrom low profligacy as being to love what the Yahoo of the mockingsatirist was to man; absorbed much by the brooding ambition that takesyouth out of the frivolous present into the serious future, and seekingcompanionship, not with contemporary idlers, but with the highest andmaturest intellects that the free commonwealth of good society broughtwithin his reach: five years so spent had developed a boy, nursing nobledreams, into a man fit for noble action, --retaining freshest youth in itsenthusiasm, its elevation of sentiment, its daring, its energy, anddivine credulity in its own unexhausted resources; but borrowing frommaturity compactness and solidity of idea, --the link between speculationand practice, the power to impress on others a sense of the superioritywhich has been self-elaborated by unconscious culture. 

"So!" said Vance, after a prolonged pause, "I don't know whether I haveresolve or genius; but certainly if I have made my way to some smallreputation, patience, hope, and concentration of purpose must have thecredit of it; and prudence, too, which you have forgotten to name, andcertainly don't evince as a charioteer. I hope, my dear fellow, you arenot extravagant? No doubt, eh?--why do you laugh?"

"The question is so like you, Frank, --thrifty as ever. "

"Do you think I could have painted with a calm mind if I knew that at mydoor there was a dun whom I could not pay? Art needs serenity; and if anartist begin his career with as few shirts to his back as I had, he mustplace economy amongst the rules of perspective. "

Lionel laughed again, and made some comments on economy which werecertainly, if smart, rather flippant, and tended not only to lower thefavourable estimate of his intellectuai improvement which Vance had justformed, but seriously disquieted the kindly artist. Vance knew theworld, --knew the peculiar temptations to which a young man in Lionel'sposition would be exposed, --knew that contempt for economy belongs tothat school of Peripatetics which reserves its last lessons for finisheddisciples in the sacred walks of the Queen's Bench. 

However, that was no auspicious moment for didactic warnings. 

"Here we are!" cried Lionel, --"Putney Bridge. "

They reached the little inn by the river-side, and while dinner wasgetting ready they hired a boat. Vance took the oars. 

VANCE. --"Not so pretty here as by those green quiet banks along which weglided, at moonlight, five years ago. "

LIONEL. --"Ah, no! And that innocent, charming child, whose portrait youtook, --you have never heard of her since?"

VANCE. --"Never! How should I? Have you?"

LIONEL. --"Only what Darrell repeated to me. His lawyer had ascertainedthat she and her grandfather had gone to America. Darrell gently impliedthat, from what he learned of them, they scarcely merited the interest Ifelt in their fate. But we were not deceived, were we, Vance?"

VANCE--"No; the little girl--what was her name? Sukey? Sally? Sophy, true--Sophy had something about her extremely prepossessing, besides herpretty face; and, in spite of that horrid cotton print, I shall neverforget it. "

LIONEL--"Her face! Nor I. I see it still before me!"

VANCE--"Her cotton print! I see it still before me! But I must not beungrateful. Would you believe it, --that little portrait, which cost methree pounds, has made, I don't say my fortune, but my fashion?"

LIONEL--"How! You had the heart to sell it?"

VANCE. --"No; I kept it as a study for young female heads--'withvariations, ' as they say in music. It was by my female heads that Ibecame the fashion; every order I have contains the condition, 'But besure, one of your sweet female heads, Mr. Vance. ' My female heads are asnecessary to my canvas as a white horse to Wouvermans'. Well, thatchild, who cost me three pounds, is the original of them all. Commencingas a Titania, she has been in turns a 'Psyche, ' a 'Beatrice-Cenci, 'a 'Minna, ' 'A Portrait of a Nobleman's Daughter, ' 'Burns's Mary inHeaven, ' 'The Young Gleaner, ' and 'Sabrina Fair, ' in Milton's 'Comus. 'I have led that child through all history, sacred and profane. I havepainted her in all costumes (her own cotton print excepted). My femaleheads are my glory; even the 'Times' critic allows that! 'Mr. Vance, there, is inimitable! a type of childlike grace peculiarly his own, ' etc. I'll lend you the article. "

LIONEL. --"And shall we never again see the original darling Sophy? Youwill laugh, Vance, but I have been heartproof against all young ladies. If ever I marry, my wife must have Sophy's eyes! In America!"

VANCE. --"Let us hope by this time happily married to a Yankee! Yankeesmarry girls in their teens, and don't ask for dowries. Married to aYankee! not a doubt of it! a Yankee who thaws, whittles, and keeps a'store'!"

LIONEL. --"Monster! Hold your tongue. /A propos/ of marriage, why are youstill single?"

VANCE. --"Because I have no wish to be doubled up! Moreover, man is likea napkin, the more neatly the housewife doubles him, the more carefullyshe lays him on the shelf. Neither can a man once doubled know how oftenhe may be doubled. Not only his wife folds him in two, but every childquarters him into a new double, till what was a wide and handsomesubstance, large enough for anything in reason, dwindles into a pitifulsquare that will not cover one platter, --all puckers and creases, smallerand smaller with every double, with every double a new crease. Then, myfriend, comes the washing-bill! and, besides all the hurts one receivesin the mangle, consider the hourly wear and tear of the linen-press! Inshort, Shakspeare vindicates the single life, and depicts the double inthe famous line, which is no doubt intended to be allegorical ofmarriage, "'Double, double, toil and trouble. '

Besides, no single man can be fairly called poor. What double man canwith certainty be called rich? A single man can lodge in a garret, anddine on a herring: nobody knows; nobody cares. Let him marry, and heinvites the world to witness where he lodges, and how he dines. Thefirst necessary a wife demands is the most ruinous, the most indefinitesuperfluity; it is Gentility according to what her neighbours callgenteel. Gentility commences with the honeymoon; it is its shadow, andlengthens as the moon declines. When the honey is all gone, your bridesays, 'We can have our tea without sugar when quite alone, love; but, incase Gentility drop in, here's a bill for silver sugar-tongs!' That'swhy I'm single. "

"Economy again, Vance. "

"Prudence, --dignity, " answered Vance, seriously; and sinking into arevery that seemed gloomy, he shot back to shore. 

CHAPTER II. 

 Mr. Vance explains how he came to grind colours and save half-pence. --A sudden announcement. 

The meal was over; the table had been spread by a window that looked uponthe river. The moon was up: the young men asked for no other lights;conversation between them--often shifting, often pausing--had graduallybecome grave, as it usually does with two companions in youth; while yetlong vistas in the Future stretch before them deep in shadow, and theyfall into confiding talk on what they wish, --what they fear; makingvisionary maps in that limitless Obscure. 

"There is so much power in faith, " said Lionel, "even when faith isapplied but to things human and earthly, that let a man be but firmlypersuaded that he is born to do, some day, what at the moment seemsimpossible, and it is fifty to one but what he does it before he dies. Surely, when you were a child at school, you felt convinced that therewas something in your fate distinct from that of the other boys, whom themaster might call quite as clever, --felt that faith in yourself whichmade you sure that you would be one day what you are. "

"Well, I suppose so; but vague aspirations and self-conceits must bebound together by some practical necessity--perhaps a very homely and avery vulgar one--or they scatter and evaporate. One would think thatrich people in high life ought to do more than poor folks in humble life. More pains are taken with their education; they have more leisure forfollowing the bent of their genius: yet it is the poor folks, often halfself-educated, and with pinched bellies, that do three-fourths of theworld's grand labour. Poverty is the keenest stimulant; and poverty mademe say, not 'I will do, ' but 'I must. '"

"You knew real poverty in childhood, Frank?"

"Real poverty, covered over with sham affluence. My father was GenteelPoverty, and my mother was Poor Gentility. The sham affluence went whenmy father died. The real poverty then came out in all its ugliness. Iwas taken from a genteel school, at which, long afterwards, I genteellypaid the bills; and I had to support my mother somehow or other, --somehowor other I succeeded. Alas, I fear not genteelly! But before I losther, which I did in a few years, she had some comforts which were notappearances; and she kindly allowed, dear soul, that gentility and shamsdo not go well together. Oh, beware of debt, Lionello mio; and nevercall that economy meanness which is but the safeguard from meandegradation. "

"I understand you at last, Vance; shake hands: I know why you aresaving. "

"Habit now, " answered Vance, repressing praise of himself, as usual. "But I remember so well when twopence was a sum to be respected that tothis day I would rather put it by than spend it. All our ideas--likeorange-plants--spread out in proportion to the size of the box whichimprisons the roots. Then I had a sister. " Vance paused a moment, as ifin pain, but went on with seeming carelessness, leaning over the window-sill, and turning his face from his friend. "I had a sister older thanmyself, handsome, gentle. "

"I was so proud of her! Foolish girl! my love was not enough for her. Foolish girl! she could not wait to see what I might live to do for her. She married--oh! so genteelly!--a young man, very well born, who hadwooed her before my father died. He had the villany to remain constantwhen she had not a farthing, and he was dependent on distant relations, and his own domains in Parnassus. The wretch was a poet! So theymarried. They spent their honeymoon genteelly, I dare say. Hisrelations cut him. Parnassus paid no rents. He went abroad. Suchheart-rending letters from her. They were destitute. How I worked! howI raged! But how could I maintain her and her husband too, mere childthat I was? No matter. They are dead now, both; all dead for whose sakeI first ground colours and saved halfpence. And Frank Vance is a stingy, selfish bachelor. Never revive this dull subject again, or I shallborrow a crown from you and cut you dead. Waiter, ho!--the bill. I'lljust go round to the stables, and see the horse put to. "

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

"No, " said Lionel, rather embarrassed; "Colonel Morley, who acts for meas 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 towntwo days; and, thanks to Morley, my table is already covered withinvitations. "

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

"You the second day, my mother the first. But there are three ballsbefore me to-night. Come home with me, and smoke your cigar while Idress. "

"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 asvalet, was in waiting at the door. "A note for you, sir, from ColonelMorley, --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 hisbrief and brilliant parliamentary career; since then, left contemptuouslyto the care of a house agent, to be let by year or by season, it hadknown various tenants of an opulence and station suitable to its spaceand site. Dinners and concerts, routs and balls, had assembled thefriends and jaded the spirits of many a gracious host and smilinghostess. The tenure of one of these temporary occupants had recentlyexpired; and, ere the agent had found another, the long absent ownerdropped down into its silenced halls as from the clouds, without otherestablishment than his old servant Mills and the woman in charge of thehouse. There, as in a caravansery, the traveller took his rest, statelyand desolate. Nothing so comfortless as one of those large London housesall to one's self. In long rows against the walls stood the emptyfauteuils. Spectral from the gilded ceiling hung lightless chandeliers. --The furniture, pompous, but worn by use and faded by time, seemedmementos of departed revels. When you return to your house in thecountry--no matter how long the absence, no matter how decayed by neglectthe friendly chambers may be, if it has only been deserted in themeanwhile (not let to new races, who, by their own shifting dynasties, have supplanted the rightful lord, and half-effaced his memorials)--thewalls may still greet you forgivingly, the character of Home be stillthere. You take up again the thread of associations which had, beensuspended, not snapped. But it is otherwise with a house in cities, especially in our fast-living London, where few houses descend fromfather to son, --where the title-deeds are rarely more than those of apurchased 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-fashioned work-table, recall to you the kind smile of amother; a house that you have left as you leave an inn, let to peoplewhose names you scarce know, with as little respect for your familyrecords as you have for theirs, --when you return after a long intervalof years to a house like that, you stand, as stood Darrell, a forlornstranger under your own roof-tree. What cared he for those who had lastgathered round those hearths with their chill steely grates, whose formshad reclined on those formal couches, whose feet had worn away the glossfrom those costly carpets? Histories in the lives of many might berecorded within those walls. "Lovers there had breathed their firstvows; bridal feasts had been held; babes had crowed in the arms of proudyoung mothers; politicians there had been raised into ministers;ministers there had fallen back into independent members;" through thosedoors corpses had been borne forth to relentless vaults. For these racesand their records what cared the owner? Their writing was not on thewalls. Sponged out, as from a slate, their reckonings with Time; leavingdim, here and there, some chance scratch of his own, blurred and bygone. Leaning against the mantelpiece, Darrell gazed round the room with avague wistful look, as if seeking to conjure up associations that mightlink 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, howeverinly changed since he last stood on those unwelcoming floors; the formstill retained the same vigour and symmetry, --the same unspeakabledignity 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 mass of dark-brown hair, though, when in theimpatience of some painful thought his hand swept the loose curls fromhis forehead, the silver threads might now be seen shooting here andthere, --vanishing almost as soon as seen. No, whatever the baptismalregister 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 isvivid; 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 mienand bearing; less of that resignation which seemed to say, "I have donewith the substances of life. " Still there was gloom, but it was morebroken and restless. Evidently that human breast was again admitting, or forcing itself to court, human hopes, human objects. Returning to thesubstances of life, their movement was seen in the shadows which, whenthey wrap us round at remoter distance, seem to lose their trouble asthey gain their width. He broke from his musing attitude with an abruptangry movement, as if shaking off thoughts which displeased him, andgathering his arms tightly to his breast, in a gesture peculiar tohimself, walked to and fro the room, murmuring inaudibly. The dooropened; he turned quickly, and with an evident sense of relief, for hisface brightened. "Alban, my dear Alban!"

"Darrell! old friend! old school-friend! dear, dear Guy Darrell!" The twoEnglishmen stood, hands tightly clasped in each other, in true Englishgreeting, their eyes moistening with remembrances that carried them backto boyhood. 

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

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

"No; I begin to decry the present and laud the past; to read withglasses, to decide from prejudice, to recoil from change, to find sensein twaddle, to know the value of health from the fear to lose it; to feelan interest in rheumatism, an awe of bronchitis; to tell anecdotes, andto wear flannel. To you in strict confidence I disclose the truth: I amno longer twenty-five. You laugh; this is civilized talk: does it notrefresh 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 youngday, --and recalls it to him on the lips of a friend in youth! ButDarrell said nothing; only he settled himself in his chair with a morecheerful ease, and inclined his relaxing brows with a nod ofencouragement or assent. 

Colonel Morley continued. "But when did you arrive? whence? How long doyou 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 facein shade, and looking towards the floor as he speaks). --"For the lastfive years I have struggled hard to renew interest in mankind, reconnectmyself with common life and its healthful objects. Between Fawley andLondon 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 astraveller ever went in search of Timbuctoo. But I have sojourned also, at long intervals, at least they seemed long to me, --in the gay capitalsof 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 youngnow. A holiday may restore thee to wholesome work, as a holiday restoresthe 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 tostay. I would not go to a hotel for a single day, lest my resolutionshould fail me. I have thrown myself into this castle of care withouteven a garrison. I hope to hold it. Help me to man it. In a word, andwithout metaphor, I am here with the design of re-entering London life. "

COLONEL MORLEY. --"I am so glad. Hearty congratulations! How rejoicedall the Viponts will be! Another 'CRISIS' is at hand. You have seen thenewspapers regularly, of course: the state of the country interests you. You say that you come from Ouzelford, the town you once represented. Iguess you will re-enter Parliament; you have but to say the word. "

DARRELL. --"Parliament! No. I received, while abroad, so earnest arequest from my old constituents to lay the foundation-stone of a newTown-Hall, in which they are much interested; and my obligations to themhave been so great that I could not refuse. I wrote to fix the day assoon as I had resolved to return to England, making a condition that Ishould be spared the infliction of a public dinner, and landed just intime to keep my appointment; reached Ouzelford early this morning, wentthrough the ceremony, made a short speech, came on at once to London, notventuring to diverge to Fawley (which is not very far from Ouzelford), lest, once there again, I should not have strength to leave it; and hereI am. " Darrell paused, then repeated, in brisk emphatic tone, "Parliament? No. Labour? No. Fellow-man, I am about to confess toyou: I would snatch back some days of youth, --a wintry likeness of youth, better than none. Old friend, let us amuse ourselves! When I wasworking hard, hard, hard! it was you who would say: 'Come forth, beamused, '--you! happy butterfly that you were! Now, I say to you, 'Showme this flaunting town that you know so well; initiate me into the joysof polite pleasures, social commune, "'Dulce mihi furere est amico. "

You have amusements, --let me share them. '"

"Faith, " quoth the Colonel, crossing his legs, "you come late in the day!Amusements cease to amuse at last. I have tried all, and begin to betired. I have had my holiday, exhausted its sports; and you, coming frombooks 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 asystem; no man ever did so with more felicitous grace: nor, in followingpleasure, have you parted company with conscience and shame. A finegentleman ever, in honour as in elegance. Well, are you satisfied withyour choice of life? Are you happy?"

"Happy! who is? Satisfied, perhaps. "

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

"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 gratifiedambition, a great career. Envy you! who would not? Your own objects inlife fulfilled: you coveted distinction, --you won it; fortune, --yourwealth is immense; the restoration of your name and lineage fromobscurity 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? Andwithal, you stand before me stalwart and unbowed, young blood still inyour veins. Ungrateful man, who would not change lots with Guy Darrell?Fame, fortune, health, and, not to flatter you, a form and presence thatwould be remarked, though you stood in that black frock by the side of amonarch in his coronation robes. "

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

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

DARRELL. --"Oh, yes! I brought it on myself. What stuff we have beentalking! Tell me the news, not political, any other. But first, yourreport of young Haughton. Cordial thanks for all your kindness to him. You write me word that he is much improved, --most likeable; you add, thatat Paris he became the rage, that in London you are sure he will beextremely popular. Be it so, if for his own sake. Are you quite surethat 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 seeingno other heir to your property--"

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

COLONEL MORLEY. --"Verily I believe that, apart from his love for you anda delicacy of sentiment that would recoil from planting hopes of wealthin the graves of benefactors, Lionel Haughton would prefer carving hisown fortunes to all the ingots hewed out of California by another's handand 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 theintention to--to--"

"Marry again, " said Darrell, firmly. "Right. I am. "

"I always felt sure you would marry again. Is the lady here too?"

"What lady?"

"The lady you have chosen. "

"Tush! I have chosen none. I come here to choose; and in this I askadvice from your experience. I would marry again! I! at my age!Ridiculous! But so it is. You know all the mothers and marriageabledaughters that London--/arida nutrix/--rears for nuptial altars: where, amongst them, shall I, Guy Darrell, the man whom you think so enviable, find the safe helpmate, whose love he may reward with munificentjointure, to whose child he may bequeath the name that has now nosuccessor, and the wealth he has no heart to spend?"

Colonel Morley--who, as we know, is by habit a matchmaker, and likes thevocation--assumes a placid but cogitative mien, rubs his brow gently, andsays in his softest, best-bred accents, "You would not marry a mere girl?some one of suitable age. I know several most superior young women onthe other side of thirty, Wilhelmina Prymme, for instance, or Janet--"

DARRELL. --"Old maids. No! decidedly no!"

COLONEL MORLEY (suspiciously). --"But you would not risk the peace of yourold age with a girl of eighteen, or else I do know a very accomplished, well-brought-up girl; just eighteen, who--"

DARRELL. --"Re-enter life by the side of Eighteen! am I a madman?"

COLONEL MORLEY. --"Neither old maids nor young maids; the choice becomesnarrowed. You would prefer a widow. Ha! I have thought of one;a prize, indeed, could you but win her, the widow of--"

DARRELL. --"Ephesus!--Bah! suggest no widow to me. A widow, with heraffections buried in the grave!"

MORLEY. --"Not necessarily. And in this case--"

DARRELL (interrupting, and with warmth). --"In every case I tell you: nowidow shall doff her weeds for me. Did she love the first man? Fickleis the woman who can love twice. Did she not love him? Why did shemarry him? Perhaps she sold herself to a rent-roll? Shall she sellherself again to me for a jointure? Heaven forbid! Talk not of widows. No dainty so flavourless as a heart warmed up again. "

COLONEL MORLEY. --"Neither maids, be they old or young, nor widows. Possibly you want an angel. London is not the place for angels. "

DARRELL. --"I grant that the choice seems involved in perplexity. How canit be otherwise if one's self is perplexed? And yet, Alban, I amserious; and I do not presume to be so exacting as my words have implied. I ask not fortune, nor rank beyond gentle blood, nor youth nor beauty noraccomplishments nor fashion, but I do ask one thing, and one thing only. "

COLONEL MORLEY. --"What is that? you have left nothing worth the having toask for. "

DARRELL. --"Nothing! I have left all! I ask some one whom I can love;love better than all the world, --not the /mariage de convenance/, not the/mariage de raison/, but the /mariage d'amour/. All other marriage, withvows of love so solemn, with intimacy of commune so close, --all othermarriage, in my eyes, is an acted falsehood, a varnished sin. Ah, if Ihad thought so always! But away regret and repentance! The future aloneis now before me! Alban Morley! I would sign away all I have in theworld (save the old house at Fawley), ay, and after signing, cut off toboot this right hand, could I but once fall in love; love, and be lovedagain, as any two of Heaven's simplest human creatures may love eachother while life is fresh! Strange! strange! look out into the world;mark the man of our years who shall be most courted, most adulated, oradmired. Give him all the attributes of power, wealth, royalty, genius, fame. See all the younger generation bow before him with hope or awe:his word can make their fortune; at his smile a reputation dawns. Well;now let that man say to the young, 'Room amongst yourselves: all thatwins me this homage I would lay at the feet of Beauty. I enter the listsof love, ' and straightway his power vanishes, the poorest booby oftwenty-four can jostle him aside; before, the object of reverence, he isnow the butt of ridicule. The instant he asks right to win the heart ofa woman, a boy whom in all else he could rule as a lackey cries, 'Off, Graybeard, that realm at least is mine!'"

COLONEL MORLEY. --"This were but eloquent extravagance, even if your beardwere gray. Men older than you, and with half your pretensions, even ofoutward form, have carried away hearts from boys like Adonis. Onlychoose well: that's the difficulty; if it was not difficult, who would bea bachelor?"

DARRELL. --"Guide my choice. Pilot me to the haven. "

COLONEL MORLEY. --"Accepted! But you must remount a suitableestablishment; reopen your way to the great world, and penetrate thosesacred recesses where awaiting spinsters weave the fatal web. Leave allto me. Let Mills (I see you have him still) call on me to-morrow aboutyour menage. You will give dinners, of course?"

DARRELL. --"Oh, of course; must I dine at them myself?"

Morley laughed softly, and took up his hat. 

"So soon!" cried Darrell. "If I fatigue you already, what chance shall Ihave with new friends?"

"So soon! it is past eleven. And it is you who must be fatigued. "

"No such good luck; were I fatigued, I might hope to sleep. I will walkback with you. Leave me not alone in this room, --alone in the jaws of afish; swallowed up by a creature whose blood is cold. "

"You have something still to say to me, " said Alban, when they were inthe open air: "I detect it in your manner; what is it?"

"I know not. But you have told me no news; these streets are grownstrange to me. Who live now in yonder houses? once the dwellers weremy friends. "

"In that house, --oh, new people! I forget their names, --but rich; in ayear or two, with luck, they may be exclusives, and forget my name. Inthe other house, Carr Vipont still. "

"Vipont; those dear Viponts! what of them all? Crawl they, sting they, bask they in the sun, or are they in anxious process of a change ofskin?"

"Hush! my dear friend: no satire on your own connections; nothing soinjudicious. I am a Vipont, too, and all for the family maxim, 'Vipontwith Vipont, and come what may!'"

"I stand rebuked. But I am no Vipont. I married, it is true, into theirhouse, and they married, ages ago, into mine; but no drop in the blood oftime-servers flows through the veins of the last childless Darrell. Pardon. I allow the merit of the Vipont race; no family more excites myrespectful interest. What of their births, deaths, and marriages?"

COLONEL MORLEY. --"As to the births, Carr has just welcomed the birth of agrandson; the first-born of his eldest son (who married last year adaughter of the Duke of Halifax), --a promising young man, a Lord in theAdmiralty. Carr has a second son in the Hussars; has just purchased hisstep: the other boys are still at school. He has three daughters too, fine girls, admirably brought up; indeed, now I think of it, the eldest, Honoria, might suit you, highly accomplished; well read; interestsherself in politics; a great admirer of intellect; of a very serious turnof mind too. "

DARRELL. --"A female politician with a serious turn of mind, --a farthingrushlight in a London fog! Hasten on to subjects less gloomy. Whosefuneral achievement is that yonder?"

COLONEL MORLEY. --"The late Lord Niton's, father to Lady Montfort. "

DARRELL. --"Lady Montfort! Her father was a Lyndsay, and died before theFlood. A deluge, at least, has gone over me and my world since I lookedon the face of his widow. "

COLONEL MORLEY. --"I speak of the present Lord Montfort's wife, --theEarl's. You of the poor Marquess's, the last Marquess; the marquisate isextinct. Surely, whatever your wanderings, you must have heard of thedeath of the last Marquess of Montfort?"

"Yes, I heard of that, " answered Darrell, in a somewhat husky andmuttered voice. "So he is dead, the young man! What killed him?"

COLONEL MORLEY. --"A violent attack of croup, --quite sudden. He wasstaying at Carr's at the time. I suspect that Carr made him talk!a thing he was not accustomed to do. Deranged his system altogether. But don't let us revive painful subjects. "

DARRELL. --"Was she with him at the time?"

COLONEL MORLEY. --"Lady Montfort? No; they were very seldom together. "

DARRELL. --"She is not married again yet?"

COLONEL MORLEY. --"No, but still young and so beautiful she will have manyoffers. I know those who are waiting to propose. Montfort has been onlydead eighteen months; died just before young Carr's marriage. His widowlives, in complete seclusion, at her jointure-house near Twickenham. Shehas only seen even me once since her loss. "

DARRELL. --"When was that?"

MORLEY. --"About six or seven months ago; she asked after you with muchinterest. "

DARRELL. --"After me!"

COLONEL MORLEY. --"To be sure. Don't I remember how constantly she andher mother were at your house? Is it strange that she should ask afteryou? You ought to know her better, --the most affectionate, gratefulcharacter. "

DARRELL. --"I dare say. But at the time you refer to, I was too occupiedto acquire much accurate knowledge of a young lady's character. I shouldhave known her mother's character better, yet I mistook even that. "

COLONEL MORLEY. --"Mrs. Lyndsay's character you might well mistake, --charming but artificial: Lady Montfort is natural. Indeed, if you hadnot that illiberal prejudice against widows, she was the very person Iwas about to suggest to you. "

DARRELL. --"A fashionable beauty! and young enough to be my daughter. Such is human friendship! So the marquisate is extinct, and Sir JamesVipont, whom I remember in the House of Commons--respectable man, greatauthority on cattle, timid, and always saying, 'Did you read that articlein to-day's paper?'--has the estates and the earldom?"

COLONEL MORLEY. --"Yes. There was some fear of a disputed succession, butSir James made his claim very clear. Between you and me, the change hasbeen a serious affliction to the Viponts. The late lord was not wise, but on state occasions he looked his part, --/tres grand seigneur/, --andCarr managed the family influence with admirable tact. The present lordhas the habits of a yeoman; his wife shares his tastes. He has taken themanagement not only of the property, but of its influence, out of Carr'shands, and will make a sad mess of it, for he is an impracticable, obsolete politician. He will never keep the family together, impossible, a sad thing. I remember how our last muster, five years ago nextChristmas, struck terror into Lord's Cabinet; the mere report of it inthe newspapers set all people talking and thinking. The result was that, two weeks after, proper overtures were made to Carr: he consented toassist the ministers; and the country was saved! Now, thanks to thisstupid new earl, in eighteen months we have lost ground which it took atleast a century and a half to gain. Our votes are divided; our influencefrittered away; Montfort House is shut up; and Carr, grown quite thin, says that in the coming 'CRISIS' a Cabinet will not only be formed, butwill also last--last time enough for irreparable mischief--without asingle Vipont in office. "

Thus Colonel Morley continued in mournful strain, Darrell silent by hisside, till the Colonel reached his own door. There, while applying hislatch-key to the lock, Alban's mind returned from the perils thatthreatened the House of Vipont and the Star of Brunswick to the pettyclaims of private friendship. But even these last were now blended withthose grander interests, due care for which every true patriot of theHouse of Vipont imbibed with his mother's milk. 

"Your appearance in town, my dear Darrell, is most opportune. It will bean object with the whole family to make the most of you at this coming'CRISIS;' I say coming, for I believe it must come. Your name is stillfreshly remembered; your position greater for having been out of all thescrapes of the party the last sixteen or seventeen years: your houseshould be the nucleus of new combinations. Don't forget to send Mills tome; I will engage your chef and your house-steward to-morrow. I knowjust the men to suit you. Your intention to marry too, just at thismoment, is most seasonable; it will increase the family interest. I maygive out that you intend to marry?"

"Oh, certainly cry it at Charing Cross. "

"A club-room will do as well. I beg ten thousand pardons; but peoplewill talk about money whenever they talk about marriage. I should notlike to exaggerate your fortune: I know it must be very large, and allat your own disposal, eh?"

"Every shilling. "

"You must have saved a great deal since you retired into private life?"

"Take that for granted. Dick Fairthorn receives my rents, and looks tomy various investments; and I accept him as an indisputable authoritywhen I say that, what with the rental of lands I purchased in my poorboy's lifetime and the interest on my much more lucrative moneyedcapital, you may safely whisper to all ladies likely to feel interest inthat diffusion of knowledge, 'Thirty-five thousand a year, and an oldfool. '"

"I certainly shall not say an old fool, for I am the same age asyourself; and if I had thirty-five thousand pounds a year, I would marrytoo. "

"You would! Old fool!" said Darrell, turning away. 

CHAPTER IV. 

 Revealing glimpses of Guy Darrell's past in his envied prime. Dig but deep enough, and under all earth runs water, under all life runs grief. 

Alone in the streets, the vivacity which had characterized Darrell'scountenance as well as his words, while with his old school friend, changed as suddenly and as completely into pensive abstracted gloomas if he had been acting a part, and with the exit the acting ceased. Disinclined to return yet to the solitude of his home, he walked on atfirst mechanically, in the restless desire of movement, he cared notwhither. But as, thus chance-led, he found himself in the centre of thatlong straight thoroughfare which connects what once were the separatevillages of Tyburn and Holborn, something in the desultory links ofrevery suggested an object to his devious feet. He had but to followthat street to his right hand, to gain in a quarter of an hour a sight ofthe humble dwelling-house in which he had first settled down, after hisearly marriage, to the arid labours of the bar. He would go, now that, wealthy and renowned, he was revisiting the long-deserted focus ofEnglish energies, and contemplate the obscure abode in which his powershad been first concentrated on the pursuit of renown and wealth. Whoamong my readers that may have risen on the glittering steep ("Ah, whocan tell how hard it is to climb!"*) has not been similarly attractedtowards the roof at the craggy foot of the ascent, under which goldendreams refreshed his straining sinews?

 *['Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar? BEATTIE. ]

Somewhat quickening his steps, now that a bourne was assigned to them, the man growing old in years, but, unhappily for himself, too tenaciousof youth in its grand discontent and keen susceptibilities to pain, strode noiselessly on, under the gaslights, under the stars; gaslightsprimly marshalled at equidistance; stars that seem to the naked eyedotted over space without symmetry or method: man's order, near andfinite, is so distinct; the Maker's order remote, infinite, is so beyondman's comprehension even of what is order!

Darrell paused hesitating. He had now gained a spot in which improvementhad altered the landmarks. The superb broad thoroughfare continued whereonce it had vanished abrupt in a labyrinth of courts and alleys. But theway was not hard to find. He turned a little towards the left, recognizing, with admiring interest, in the gay, white, would-be Grecianedifice, with its French grille, bronzed, gilded, the transformed Museum, in the still libraries of which he had sometimes snatched a brief andghostly respite from books of law. Onwards yet through lifelessBloomsbury, not so far towards the last bounds of Atlas as the desolationof Podden Place, but the solitude deepening as he passed. There it is, a quiet street indeed! not a soul on its gloomy pavements, not even apoliceman's soul. Nought stirring save a stealthy, profligate, good-for-nothing cat, flitting fine through yon area bars. Down that street hadhe come, I trove, with a livelier, quicker step the day when, by thestrange good-luck which had uniformly attended his worldly career ofhonours, he had been suddenly called upon to supply the place of anabsent senior, and in almost his earliest brief the Courts of Westminsterhad recognized a master, come, I trove, with a livelier step, knocked atthat very door whereat he is halting now; entered the room where theyoung wife sat, and at sight of her querulous peevish face, and at soundof her unsympathizing languid voice, fled into his cupboard-like backparlour, and muttered "Courage! Courage!" to endure the home he hadentered longing for a voice which should invite and respond to a cry ofjoy. 

How closed up, dumb, and blind looked the small mean house, with itssmall mean door, its small mean rayless windows! Yet a FAME had beenborn there! Who are the residents now? Buried in slumber, have they any"golden dreams"? Works therein any struggling brain, to which theprosperous man might whisper "Courage!" or beats, there, any troubledheart to which faithful woman should murmur "Joy"? Who knows? London isa wondrous poem, but each page of it is written in a different language, --no lexicon yet composed for any. 

Back through the street, under the gaslights, under the stars, went GuyDarrell, more slow and more thoughtful. Did the comparison between whathe had been, what he was, the mean home just revisited, the stately hometo which he would return, suggest thoughts of natural pride? It wouldnot seem so; no pride in those close-shut lips, in that melancholy stoop. 

He came into a quiet square, --still Bloomsbury, --and right before him wasa large respectable mansion, almost as large as that one in courtlierquarters to which he loiteringly delayed the lone return. There, too, had been for a time the dwelling which was called his home; there, whengold was rolling in like a tide, distinction won, position assured;there, not yet in Parliament, but foremost at the bar, --already pressedby constituencies, already wooed by ministers; there, still young--O luckiest of lawyers!--there had he moved his household gods. Fitresidence for a Prince of the Gown! Is it when living there that youwould envy the prosperous man? Yes, the moment his step quits that door;but envy him when he enters its threshold?--nay, envy rather thatroofless Savoyard who has crept under yonder portico, asleep with hisragged arm round the cage of his stupid dormice! There, in that greatbarren drawing-room, sits a

 "Pale and elegant Aspasia. "

Well, but the wife's face is not querulous now. Look again, --anxious, fearful, secret, sly. Oh! that fine lady, a Vipont Crooke, is notcontented to be wife to the wealthy, great Mr. Darrell. What wants she?that he should be spouse to the fashionable fine Mrs. Darrell? Pride inhim! not a jot of it; such pride were unchristian. Were he proud of her, as a Christian husband ought to be of so elegant a wife, would he stillbe in Bloomsbury? Envy him! the high gentleman, so true to his blood, all galled and blistered by the moral vulgarities of a tuft-hunting, toad-eating mimic of the Lady Selinas. Envy him! Well, why not? Allwomen have their foibles. Wise husbands must bear and forbear. Is thatall? wherefore, then, is her aspect so furtive, wherefore on his a wild, vigilant sternness? Tut, what so brings into coveted fashion a fair ladyexiled to Bloomsbury as the marked adoration of a lord, not her own, whogives law to St. James's! Untempted by passion, cold as ice toaffection; if thawed to the gush of a sentiment secretly preferring thehusband she chose, wooed, and won to idlers less gifted even in outwardattractions, --all this, yet seeking, coquetting for, the eclat ofdishonour! To elope? Oh, no, too wary for that, but to be gazed at andtalked of as the fair Mrs. Darrell, to whom the Lovelace of London was sofondly devoted. Walk in, haughty son of the Dare-all. Darest thou askwho has just left thy house? Darest thou ask what and whence is the notethat sly hand has secreted? Darest thou?--perhaps yes: what then? canstthou lock up thy wife? canst thou poniard the Lovelace? Lock up the air!poniard all whose light word in St. James's can bring into fashion thematron of Bloomsbury! Go, lawyer, go, study briefs, and be parchment. 

Agonies, agonies, shot again through Guy Darrell's breast as he looked onthat large, most respectable house, and remembered his hourly campaignagainst disgrace! He has triumphed. Death fights for him: on the verybrink of the last scandal, a cold, caught at some Vipont's ball, becamefever; and so from that door the Black Horses bore away the BloomsburyDame, ere she was yet--the fashion! Happy in grief the widower who may, with confiding hand, ransack the lost wife's harmless desk, sure that nothought concealed from him in life will rise accusing from the treasuredpapers. But that pale proud mourner, hurrying the eye over sweet-scentedbillets; compelled, in very justice to the dead, to convince himself thatthe mother of his children was corrupt only at heart, --that the BlackHorses had come to the door in time, --and, wretchedly consoled by thatniggardly conviction, flinging into the flames the last flimsy tatters onwhich his honour (rock-like in his own keeping) had been fluttering toand fro in the charge of a vain treacherous fool, --envy you that mourner?No! not even in his release. Memory is not nailed down in the velvetcoffin; and to great loyal natures less bitter is the memory of the lostwhen hallowed by tender sadness than when coupled with scorn and shame. 

The wife is dead. Dead, too, long years ago, the Lothario! The worldhas forgotten them; they fade out of this very record when ye turn thepage; no influence, no bearing have they on such future events as maymark what yet rests of life to Guy Darrell. But as he there stands andgazes into space, the two forms are before his eye as distinct as ifliving still. Slowly, slowly he gazes them down: the false smilesflicker away from their feeble lineaments; woe and terror on theiraspects, --they sink, they shrivel, they dissolve!

CHAPTER V. 

 The wreck cast back from Charybdis. 

 /Souviens-toi de to Gabrielle/. 

Guy Darrell turned hurriedly from the large house in the great square, and, more and more absorbed in revery, he wandered out of his direct wayhomeward, clear and broad though it was, and did not rouse himself tillhe felt, as it were, that the air had grown darker; and looking vaguelyround, he saw that he had strayed into a dim maze of lanes and passages. He paused under one of the rare lamp-posts, gathering up hisrecollections of the London he had so long quitted, and doubtful for amoment or two which turn to take. Just then, up from an alley frontinghim at right angles, came suddenly, warily, a tall, sinewy, ill-bodingtatterdemalion figure, and, seeing Darrell's face under the lamp, haltedabrupt at the mouth of the narrow passage from which it had emerged, --a dark form filling up the dark aperture. Does that ragged wayfarerrecognize a foe by the imperfect ray of the lamplight? or is he a merevulgar footpad, who is doubting whether he should spring upon a prey?Hostile his look, his gestures, the sudden cowering down of the strongframe as if for a bound; but still he is irresolute. What awes him?What awes the tiger, who would obey his blood-instinct without fear, in his rush on the Negro, the Hindoo; but who halts and hesitates at thesight of the white man, the lordly son of Europe? Darrell's eye wasturned towards the dark passage, towards the dark figure, --carelessly, neither recognizing nor fearing nor defying, --carelessly, as at anyharmless object in crowded streets and at broad day. But while thateye was on him, the tatterdemalion halted; and indeed, whatever hishostility, or whatever his daring, the sight of Darrell took him by sosudden a surprise that he could not at once re-collect his thoughts, anddetermine how to approach the quiet unconscious man, who, in reach of hisspring, fronted his overwhelming physical strength with the habitual airof dignified command. His first impulse was that of violence; his secondimpulse curbed the first. But Darrell now turns quickly, and walksstraight on; the figure quits the mouth of the passage, and follows witha long and noiseless stride. It has nearly gained Darrell. With whatintent? A fierce one, perhaps, --for the man's face is sinister, and hisstate evidently desperate, --when there emerges unexpectedly from an uglylooking court or cul-de-sac, just between Darrell and his pursuer, aslim, long-backed, buttoned-up, weazel-faced policeman. The policemaneyes the tatterdemalion instinctively, then turns his glance towards thesolitary defenceless gentleman in advance, and walks on, keeping himselfbetween the two. The tatterdemalion stifles an impatient curse. Be hispurpose force, be it only supplication, be it colloquy of any kind, impossible to fulfil it while that policeman is there. True that in hispowerful hands he could have clutched that slim, long-backed officer, andbroken him in two as a willow-wand. But that officer is the Personationof Law, and can stalk through a legion of tatterdemalions as a ferret mayglide through a barn full of rats. The prowler feels he is suspected. Unknown as yet to the London police, he has no desire to invite theirscrutiny. He crosses the way; he falls back; he follows from afar. Thepoliceman may yet turn away before the safer streets of the metropolis begained. No; the cursed Incarnation of Law, with eyes in its slim back, continues its slow strides at the heels of the unsuspicious Darrell. Themore solitary defiles are already passed, --now that dim lane, with itsdead wall on one side. By the dead wall skulks the prowler; on the otherside still walks the Law. Now--alas for the prowler!--shine out thethroughfares, no longer dim nor deserted, --Leicester Square, theHaymarket, Pall Mall, Carlton Gardens; Darrell is at his door. Thepoliceman turns sharply round. There, at the corner near the learnedClub-house, halts the tatterdemalion. Towards the tatterdemalion thepoliceman now advances quickly. The tatterdemalion is quicker still;fled like a guilty thought. 

Back, back, back into that maze of passages and courts, back to the mouthof that black alley. There he halts again. Look at him. He has arrivedin London but that very night, after an absence of more than four years. He has arrived from the sea-side on foot; see, his shoes are worn intoholes. He has not yet found a shelter for the night. He has beendirected towards that quarter, thronged with adventurers, native andforeign, for a shelter, safe, if squalid. It is somewhere near thatcourt at the mouth of which he stands. He looks round: the policeman isbaffled; the coast clear. He steals forth, and pauses under the samegaslight as that under which Guy Darrell had paused before, --under thesame gaslight, under the same stars. From some recess in his rags hedraws forth a large, distained, distended pocket-book, --last relic ofsprucer days, --leather of dainty morocco, once elaborately tooled, patentsprings, fairy lock, fit receptacle for bank-notes, /billets-doux/, memoranda of debts of honour, or pleasurable engagements. Now how worn, tarnished, greasy, rascallion-like, the costly bauble! Filled with whatmotley, unlovable contents: stale pawn-tickets of foreign /monts depiete/, pledges never henceforth to be redeemed; scrawls by villanoushands in thievish hierolgyphics; ugly implements replacing the malachitepenknife, the golden toothpick, the jewelled pencil-case, once so neatlyset within their satin lappets. Ugly implements, indeed, --a file, agimlet, loaded dice. Pell-mell, with such more hideous and recentcontents, dishonoured evidences of gaudier summer life, --locks of ladies'hair, love-notes treasured mechanically, not from amorous sentiment, butperhaps from some vague idea that they might be of use if those who gavethe locks or wrote the notes should be raised in fortune, and could buyback the memorials of shame. Diving amidst these miscellaneous documentsand treasures, the prowler's hand rested on some old letters, in clerk-like fair calligraphy, tied round with a dirty string, and on them, inanother and fresher writing, a scrap that contained an address, --"SamuelAdolphus Poole, Esq. , Alhambra Villa, Regent's Park. " "To-morrow, Nix myDolly; to-morrow, " muttered the tatterdemalion; "but to-night, --plague onit, where is the other blackguard's direction? Ah, here!" And heextracted from the thievish scrawls a peculiarly thievish-lookinghieroglyph. Now, as he lifts it up to read by the gaslight, survey himwell. Do you not know him? Is it possible? What! the brilliantsharper! The ruffian exquisite! Jasper Losely! Can it be? Oncebefore, in the fields of Fawley, we beheld him out at elbows, seedy, shabby, ragged. But then it was the decay of a foppish spendthrift, --clothes distained, ill-assorted, yet, still of fine cloth; shoes inholes, yet still pearl-coloured brodequins. But now it is the decay ofno foppish spendthrift: the rags are not of fine cloth; the tatteredshoes are not the brodequins. The man has fallen far below the politergrades of knavery, in which the sharper affects the beau. And thecountenance, as we last saw it, if it had lost much of its earlierbeauty, was still incontestably handsome. What with vigour and healthand animal spirits, then on the aspect still lingered light; now fromcorruption the light itself was gone. In that herculean constitutionexcess of all kinds had at length forced its ravage, and the ravage wasvisible in the ruined face. The once sparkling eye was dull andbloodshot. The colours of the cheek, once clear and vivid, to whichfiery drink had only sent the blood in a warmer glow, were now of aleaden dulness, relieved but by broken streaks of angry red, like gleamsof flame struggling through gathered smoke. The profile, once sharp anddelicate like Apollo's, was now confused in its swollen outline; a fewyears more, and it would be gross as that of Silenus, --the nostrils, distended with incipient carbuncles, which betray the gnawing fang thatalcohol fastens into the liver. Evil passions had destroyed the outlinesof the once beautiful lips, arched as a Cupid's bow. The sidelong, lowering, villanous expression which had formerly been but occasional wasnow habitual and heightened. It was the look of the bison before itgores. It is true, however, that even yet on the countenance therelingered the trace of that lavish favour bestowed on it by nature. Anartist would still have said, "How handsome that ragamuffin must havebeen!" And true is it, also, that there was yet that about the bearingof the man which contrasted his squalor, and seemed to say that he hadnot been born to wear rags and loiter at midnight amongst the haunts ofthieves. Nay, I am not sure that you would have been as incredulous now, if told that the wild outlaw before you had some claim by birth or bynurture to the rank of gentleman, as you would had you seen the gayspendthrift in his gaudy day. For then he seemed below, and now heseemed above, the grade in which he took place. And all this made hisaspect yet more sinister, and the impression that he was dangerous yetmore profound. Muscular strength often remains to a powerful frame longafter the constitution is undermined, and Jasper Losely's frame was stillthat of a formidable athlete; nay, its strength was yet more apparent nowthat the shoulders and limbs had increased in bulk than when it was half-disguised in the lissome symmetry of exquisite proportion, --less active, less supple, less capable of endurance, but with more crushing weight inits rush or its blow. It was the figure in which brute force seems so topredominate that in a savage state it would have worn a crown, --thefigure which secures command and authority in all societies where forcealone gives the law. Thus, under the gaslight and under the stars, stoodthe terrible animal, --a strong man imbruted; SOUVIENS-TOI DE TAGABRIELLE. " There, still uneffaced, though the gold threads are alltarnished and ragged, are the ominous words on the silk of the she-devil's love-token! But Jasper has now inspected the direction on thepaper he held to the lamp-light, and, satisfying himself that he was inthe right quarter, restored the paper to the bulky distended pocket-bookand walked sullenly on towards the court from which had emerged thepoliceman who had crossed his prowling chase. 

"It is the most infernal shame, " said Losely between his grinded teeth, "that I should be driven to these wretched dens for a lodging, while thatman, who ought to feel bound to maintain me, should be rolling in wealth, and cottoned up in a palace. But he shall fork out. Sophy must behunted up. I will clothe her in rags like these. She shall sit at hisstreet-door. I will shame the miserly hunks. But how track the girl?Have I no other hold over him? Can I send Dolly Poole to him? Howaddled my brains are!--want of food, want of sleep. Is this the place?Peuh!--"

Thus murmuring, he now reached the arch of the court, and was swallowedup in its gloom. A few strides and he came into a square open space onlylighted by the skies. A house, larger than the rest, which were of themeanest order, stood somewhat back, occupying nearly one side of thequadrangle, --old, dingy, dilapidated. At the door of this house stoodanother man, applying his latch-key to the lock. As Losely approached, the man turned quickly, half in fear, half in menace, --a small, verythin, impish-looking man, with peculiarly restless features that seemedtrying to run away from his face. Thin as he was, he looked all skin andno bones, a goblin of a man whom it would not astonish you to hear couldcreep through a keyhole, seeming still more shadowy and impalpable by hisslight, thin, sable dress, not of cloth, but a sort of stuff like alpaca. Nor was that dress ragged, nor, as seen but in starlight, did it lookworn or shabby; still you had but to glance at the creature to feel thatit was a child in the same Family of Night as the ragged felon thattowered by its side. The two outlaws stared at each other. "Cutts!"said Losely, in the old rollicking voice, but in a hoarser, rougher key, "Cutts, my boy, here I am; welcome me!

"What? General Jas. !" returned Cutts, in a tone which was not without acertain respectful awe, and then proceeded to pour out a series ofquestions in a mysterious language, which may be thus translated andabridged: "How long have you been in England? How has it fared with you?You seem very badly off; coming here to hide? Nothing very bad, I hope?What is it?"

Jasper answered in the same language, though with less practised masteryof it, and with that constitutional levity which, whatever the time orcircumstances, occasionally gave a strange sort of wit, or queer, uncanny, devil-me-care vein of drollery, to his modes of expression. 

"Three months of the worst luck man ever had; a row with the gens-d'armes, --long story: three of our pals seized; affair of the galleys forthem, I suspect (French frogs can't seize me!); fricasseed one or two ofthem; broke away, crossed the country, reached the coast; found an honestsmuggler; landed off Sussex with a few other kegs of brandy; rememberedyou, preserved the address you gave me, and condescend to this rat-holefor a night or so. Let me in; knock up somebody, break open the larder. I want to eat, I am famished; I should have eaten you by this time, onlythere's nothing on your bones. "

The little man opened the door, --a passage black as Erebus. "Give meyour hand, General. " Jasper was led through the pitchy gloom for a fewyards; then the guide found a gas-cock, and the place broke suddenly intolight: a dirty narrow staircase on one side; facing it a sort of lobby, in which an open door showed a long sanded parlour, like that in publichouses; several tables, benches, the walls whitewashed, but adorned withsundry ingenious designs made by charcoal or the smoked ends of clay-pipes; a strong smell of stale tobacco and of gin and rum. Anothergaslight, swinging from the centre of the ceiling, sprang into light asCutts touched the tap-cock. 

"Wait here, " said the guide. "I will go and get you some supper. "

"And some brandy, " said Jasper. 

"Of course. "

The bravo threw himself at length on one of the tables, and, closing hiseyes, moaned. His vast strength had become acquainted with physicalpain. In its stout knots and fibres, aches and sharp twinges, thedragon-teeth of which had been sown years ago in revels or brawls, whichthen seemed to bring but innocuous joy and easy triumph, now began tognaw and grind. But when Cutts reappeared with coarse viands and thebrandy bottle, Jasper shook off the sense of pain, as does a wounded wildbeast that can still devour; and after regaling fast and ravenously, heemptied half the bottle at a draught, and felt himself restored andfresh. 

"Shall you fling yourself amongst the swell fellows who hold their clubhere, General?" asked Cutts; "'tis a bad trade; every year it getsworse. Or have you not some higher game in your eye?"

"I have higher game in my eye. One bird I marked down this very night. But that may be slow work, and uncertain. I have in this pocket-book abank to draw upon meanwhile. "

"How? forged French /billets de banque/? dangerous. "

"Pooh! better than that, --letters which prove theft against arespectable rich man. "

"Ah, you expect hush-money?"

"Exactly so. I have good friends in London. "

"Among them, I suppose, that affectionate 'adopted mother, ' who wouldhave kept you in such order. "

"Thousand thunders! I hope not. I am not a superstitious man, but Ifear that woman as if she were a witch, and I believe she is one. Youremember black Jean, whom we call Sansculotte. He would have filled achurchyard with his own brats for a five-franc piece; but he would nothave crossed a churchyard alone at night for a thousand naps. Well, thatwoman to me is what a churchyard was to black Jean. No: if she is inLondon, I have but to go to her house and say, 'Food, shelter, money;'and I would rather ask Jack Ketch for a rope. "

"How do you account for it, General? She does not beat you; she is notyour wife. I have seen many a stout fellow, who would stand fire withoutblinking, show the white feather at a scold's tongue. But then he mustbe spliced to her--"

"Cutts, that Griffin does not scold: she preaches. She wants to make mespoony, Cutts: she talks of my young days, Cutts; she wants to blight meinto what she calls an honest man, Cutts, --the virtuous dodge! She snubsand cows me, and frightens me out of my wits, Cutts; for I do believethat the witch is determined to have me, body and soul, and to marry mesome day in spite of myself, Cutts; and if ever you see me about to beclutched in those horrible paws, poison me with ratsbane, or knock me onthe head, Cutts. "

The little man laughed a little laugh, sharp and eldrich, at the strangecowardice of the stalwart dare-devil. But Jasper did not echo the laugh. 

"Hush!" he said timidly, "and let me have a bed, if you can; I have notslept in one for a week, and my nerves are shaky. "

The imp lighted a candle-end at the gas-lamp, and conducted Losely up thestairs to his own sleeping-room, which was less comfortless than might besupposed. He resigned his bed to the wanderer, who flung himself on it, rags and all. But sleep was no more at his command than it is at aking's. 

"Why the ---- did you talk of that witch?" he cried peevishly to Cutts, who was composing himself to rest on the floor. "I swear I fancy I feelher sitting on my chest like a nightmare. "

He turned with a vehemence which shook the walls, and wrapped thecoverlet round him, plunging his head into its folds. Strange though itseem to the novice in human nature, to Jasper Losely the woman who had solong lived but for one object--namely, to save him from the gibbet--wasas his evil genius, his haunting fiend. He had conceived a profoundterror of her from the moment he perceived that she was resolutely bentupon making him honest. He had broken from her years ago, fled, resumedhis evil courses, hid himself from her, --in vain. Wherever he went, there went she. He might baffle the police, not her. Hunger had oftenforced him to accept her aid. As soon as he received it, he hid from heragain, burying himself deeper and deeper in the mud, like a persecutedtench. He associated her idea with all the ill-luck that had befallenhim. Several times some villanous scheme on which he had counted to makehis fortune had been baffled in the most mysterious way; and just whenbaffled, and there seemed no choice but to cut his own throat or some oneelse's, up turned grim Arabella Crane, in the iron-gray gown, and withthe iron-gray ringlets, --hatefully, awfully beneficent, --offering food, shelter, gold, --and some demoniacal, honourable work. Often had he beenin imminent peril from watchful law or treacherous accomplice. She hadwarned and saved him, as she had saved him from the fell GabrielleDesmarets, who, unable to bear the sentence of penal servitude, after along process, defended with astonishing skill and enlisting the romanticsympathies of young France, had contrived to escape into another world bymeans of a subtle poison concealed about her /distinguee/ person, andwhich she had prepared years ago with her own bloodless hands, and nodoubt scientifically tested its effects on others. The cobra di capellais gone at last! "/Souviens-toi de ta Gabrielle/, " O Jasper Losely! Butwhy Arabella Crane should thus continue to watch over him whom she nolonger professed to love, how she should thus have acquired the gift ofubiquity and the power to save him, Jasper Losely could not conjecture. The whole thing seemed to him weird and supernatural. Most truly did hesay that she had cowed him. He had often longed to strangle her; whenabsent from her, had often resolved upon that act of gratitude. Themoment he came in sight of her stern, haggard face, her piercing lurideyes; the moment he heard her slow, dry voice in some such sentences asthese: "Again you come to me in your trouble, and ever shall. Am I notstill as your mother, but with a wife's fidelity, till death us do part?There's the portrait of what you were: look at it, Jasper. Now turn tothe glass: see what you are. Think of the fate of Gabrielle Desmarets!But for me, what, long since, had been your own? But I will save you:I have sworn it. You shall be wax in these hands at last, "--the momentthat voice thus claimed and insisted on redeeming him, the ruffian felta cold shudder, his courage oozed, he could no more have nerved his armagainst her than a Thug would have lifted his against the dire goddess ofhis murderous superstition. Jasper could not resist a belief that thelife of this dreadful protectress was, somehow or other, made essentialto his; that, were she to die, he should perish in some ghastly andpreternatural expiation. But for the last few months he had, at length, escaped from her; diving so low, so deep into the mud, that even her netcould not mesh him. Hence, perhaps, the imminence of the perils fromwhich he had so narrowly escaped, hence the utterness of his presentdestitution. But man, however vile, whatever his peril, whatever hisdestitution, was born free, and loves liberty. Liberty to go to Satanin his own way was to Jasper Losely a supreme blessing compared tothat benignant compassionate espionage, with its relentless eye andrestraining hand. Alas and alas! deem not this perversity unnaturalin that headstrong self-destroyer! How many are there whom not a grim, hard-featured Arabella Crane, but the long-suffering, divine, omniscient, gentle Providence itself, seeks to warn, to aid, to save; and is shunned, and loathed, and fled from, as if it were an evil genius! How many arethere who fear nothing so much as the being made good in spite ofthemselves?--how many? who can count them?

CHAPTER VI. 

 The public man needs but one patron; namely, THE LUCKY MOMENT. 

"At his house in Carlton Gardens, Guy Darrell, Esq. , for the season. "

Simple insertion in the pompous list of Fashionable Arrivals! the nameof a plain commoner embedded in the amber which glitters with so manycoronets and stars! Yet such is England, with all its veneration fortitles, that the eyes of the public passed indifferently over the restof that chronicle of illustrious "whereabouts, " to rest with interest, curiosity, speculation, on the unemblazoned name which but a day beforehad seemed slipped out of date, --obsolete as that of an actor who figuresno more in play-bills. Unquestionably the sensation excited was due, in much, to the "ambiguous voices" which Colonel Morley had disseminatedthroughout the genial atmosphere of club-rooms. "Arrived in London forthe season!"--he, the orator, once so famous, long so forgotten, who hadbeen out of the London world for the space of more than half ageneration. "Why now? why for the season?" Quoth the Colonel, "He isstill in the prime of life as a public man, and--a CRISIS is at hand!"

But that which gave weight and significance to Alban Morley's hintswas the report in the newspapers of Guy Darrell's visit to his oldconstituents, and of the short speech he had addressed to them, to whichhe had so slightly referred in his conversation with Alban. True, thespeech was short: true, it touched but little on passing topics ofpolitical interest; rather alluding, with modesty and terseness, to thecontests and victories of a former day. But still, in the few wordsthere was the swell of the old clarion, the wind of the Paladin's hornwhich woke Fontarabian echoes. 

It is astonishing how capricious, how sudden, are the changes in value ofa public man. All depends upon whether the public want, or believe theywant, the man; and that is a question upon which the public do not knowtheir own minds a week before; nor do they always keep in the same mind, when made up, for a week together. If they do not want a man; if he donot hit the taste, nor respond to the exigency of the time, --whatever hiseloquence, his abilities, his virtues, they push him aside or cry himdown. Is he wanted? does the mirror of the moment reflect his image?--that mirror is an intense magnifier--his proportions swell; they becomegigantic. At that moment the public wanted some man; and the instant thehint was given, "Why not Guy Darrell?" Guy Darrell was seized upon asthe man wanted. It was one of those times in our Parliamentary historywhen the public are out of temper with all parties; when recognizedleaders have contrived to damage themselves; when a Cabinet is shaking, and the public neither care to destroy nor to keep it, --a time too, whenthe country seemed in some danger, and when, mere men of business heldunequal to the emergency, whatever name suggested associations of vigour, eloquence, genius rose to a premium above its market price in times oftranquillity and tape. Without effort of his own, by the mere force ofthe undercurrent, Guy Darrell was thrown up from oblivion into note. Hecould not form a Cabinet, certainly not; but he might help to bring aCabinet together, reconcile jarring elements, adjust disputed questions, take in such government some high place, influence its councils, anddelight a public weary of the oratory of the day with the eloquence ofa former race. For the public is ever a /laudator temporis acti/, andwhatever the authors or the orators immediately before it, were thoseauthors and orators Homers and Ciceros, would still shake a disparaginghead, and talk of these degenerate days as Homer himself talked agesbefore Leonidas stood in the pass of Thermopylae, or Miltiades routedAsian armaments at Marathon. Guy Darrell belonged to a former race. Thefathers of those young members rising now into fame had quoted to theirsons his pithy sentences, his vivid images; and added, as Fox added whenquoting Burke, "But you should have heard and seen the man!"

Heard and seen the man! But there he was again! come up as from agrave, --come up to the public just when such a man was wanted. Wantedhow? wanted where? Oh, somehow and somewhere! There he is! make themost of him. The house in Carlton Gardens is prepared, the establishmentmounted. Thither flock all the Viponts, nor they alone; all the chiefsof all parties, nor they alone; all the notabilities of our grandmetropolis. Guy Darrell might be startled at his own position; but hecomprehended its nature, and it did not discompose his nerves. He knewpublic life well enough to be aware how much the popular favour is thecreature of an accident. By chance he had nicked the time; had he thuscome to town the season before, he might have continued obscure, a manlike Guy Darrell not being wanted then. Whether with or without design, his bearing confirmed and extended the effect produced by hisreappearance. Gracious, but modestly reserved, he spoke little, listenedbeautifully. Many of the questions which agitated all around him hadgrown up into importance since his day of action; nor in his retirementhad he traced their progressive development, with their changeful effectsupon men and parties. But a man who has once gone deeply into practicalpolitics might sleep in the Cave of Trophonius for twenty years, andfind, on waking, very little to learn. Darrell regained the level ofthe day, and seized upon all the strong points on which men were divided, with the rapidity of a prompt and comprehensive intellect, his judgmentperhaps the clearer from the freshness of long repose and the composureof dispassionate survey. When partisans wrangled as to what should havebeen done, Darrell was silent; when they asked what should be done, outcame one of his terse sentences, and a knot was cut. Meanwhile it istrue this man, round whom expectations grouped and rumour buzzed, was inneither House of Parliament; but that was rather a delay to his energiesthan a detriment to his consequence. 

Important constituencies, anticipating a vacancy, were already on thelook-out for him; a smaller constituency, in the interim, Carr Vipontundertook to procure him any day. There was always a Vipont ready toaccept something, even the Chiltern Hundreds. But Darrell, not withoutreason, demurred at re-entering the House of Commons after an absence ofseventeen years. He had left it with one of those rare reputations whichno wise man likes rashly to imperil. The Viponts sighed. He wouldcertainly be more useful in the Commons than the Lords, but still in theLords he would be of great use. They would want a debating lord, perhapsa lord acquainted with law in the coming CRISIS, --if he preferred thepeerage? Darrell demurred still. The man's modesty was insufferable;his style of speaking might not suit that august assembly: and as to law, he could never now be a law lord; he should be but a ci-devant advocate, affecting the part of a judicial amateur. 

In short, without declining to re-enter public life, seeming, on thecontrary, to resume all his interest in it, Darrell contrived withadmirable dexterity to elude for the present all overtures pressed uponhim, and even to convince his admirers, not only of his wisdom, but ofhis patriotism in that reticence. For certainly he thus managed toexercise a very considerable influence: his advice was more sought, hissuggestions more heeded, and his power in reconciling certain rivaljealousies was perhaps greater than would have been the case if he hadactually entered either House of Parliament, and thrown himselfexclusively into the ranks, not only of one party, but of one section ofa party. Nevertheless, such suspense could not last very long; he mustdecide at all events before the next session. Once he was seen in thearena of his old triumphs, on the benches devoted to strangersdistinguished by the Speaker's order. There, recognized by the oldermembers, eagerly gazed at by the younger, Guy Darrell listened calmly, throughout a long field-night, to voices that must have roused fromforgotten graves kindling and glorious memories; voices of those veteransnow--by whose side he had once struggled for some cause which he hadthen, in the necessary exaggeration of all honest enthusiasm, identifiedwith a nation's life-blood. Voices, too of the old antagonists overwhose routed arguments he had marched triumphant amidst applauses thatthe next day rang again through England from side to side. Hark! thevery man with whom, in the old battle-days, he had been the mosthabitually pitted, is speaking now! His tones are embarrassed, hisargument confused. Does he know who listens yonder? Old members thinkso, --smile; whisper each other, and glance significantly where Darrellsits. 

Sits, as became him, tranquil, respectful, intent, scemingly, perhapsreally, unconscious of the sensation he excites. What an eye for anorator! how like the eye in a portrait; it seems to fix on each other eyethat seeks it, --steady, fascinating. Yon distant members, behind theSpeaker's chair, at the far distance, feel the light of that eye traveltowards them. How lofty and massive, among all those rows of humanheads, seems that forehead, bending slightly down, with the dark strongline of the weighty eyebrow! But what is passing within that secretmind? Is there mournfulness in the retrospect? Is there eagerness torenew the strife? Is that interest in the hour's debate feigned or real?Impossible for him who gazed upon that face to say. And that eye wouldhave seemed to the gazer to read himself through and through to theheart's core, long ere the gazer could hazard a single guess as to thethoughts beneath that marble forehead, --as to the emotions within theheart over which, in old senatorial fashion, the arms were folded with soconventional an ease. 

CHAPTER VII. 

 Darrell and Lionel. 

Darrell had received Lionel with some evident embarrassment, which soonyielded to affectionate warmth. He took to the young man whose fortuneshe had so improved; he felt that with the improved fortunes the youngman's whole being was improved: assured position, early commune with thebest social circles, in which the equality of fashion smooths away alldisparities in rank, had softened in Lionel much of the wayward andmorbid irritability of his boyish pride; but the high spirit, thegenerous love of independence, the scorn of mercenary calculation, werestrong as ever; these were in the grain of his nature. In common withall who in youth aspire to be one day noted from the "undistinguishablemany, " Lionel had formed to himself a certain ideal standard, above theordinary level of what the world is contented to call honest, or esteemclever. He admitted into his estimate of life the heroic element, notundesirable even in the most practical point of view, for the world isso in the habit of decrying; of disbelieving in high motives and pureemotions; of daguerreotyping itself with all its ugliest wrinkles, stripped of the true bloom that brightens, of the true expression thatredeems, those defects which it invites the sun to limn, that we shallnever judge human nature aright, if we do not set out in life with ourgaze on its fairest beauties, and our belief in its latent good. In aword we should begin with the Heroic, if we would learn the Human. Butthough to himself Lionel thus secretly prescribed a certain superiorityof type, to be sedulously aimed at, even if never actually attained, hewas wholly without pedantry and arrogance towards his own contemporaries. From this he was saved not only by good-nature, animal spirits, frankhardihood, but by the very affluence of ideas which animated his tongue, coloured his language, and whether to young or old, wise or dull, madehis conversation racy and original. He was a delightful companion; andif he had taken much instruction from those older and wiser than himself, he so bathed that instruction in the fresh fountain of his own livelyintelligence, so warmed it at his own beating impulsive heart, that hecould make an old man's gleanings from experience seem a young man'sguesses into truth. Faults he had, of course, --chiefly the faults commonat his age; amongst them, perhaps, the most dangerous were, --firstly, carelessness in money matters; secondly, a distaste for advice in whichprudence was visibly predominant. His tastes were not in realityextravagant: but money slipped through his hands, leaving little to showfor it; and when his quarterly allowance became due, ample though itwas, --too ample, perhaps, --debts wholly forgotten started up to seizehold of it. And debts as yet being manageable were not regarded withsufficient horror. Paid or put aside, as the case might be, they weremerely looked upon as bores. Youth is in danger till it learn to lookupon them as furies. For advice, he took it with pleasure, when clothedwith elegance and art, when it addressed ambition, when it exalted theloftier virtues. But advice, practical and prosy, went in at one ear andout at the other. In fact, with many talents, he had yet no adequateballast of common-sense; and if ever he get enough to steady his barkthrough life's trying voyage, the necessity of so much dull weight mustbe forcibly stricken home less to his reason than his imagination or hisheart. But if, somehow or other, he get it not, I will not insure hisvessel. 

I know not if Lionel Haughton had genius; he never assumed that he had:but he had something more like genius than that prototype, RESOLVE, ofwhich he boasted to the artist. He had YOUTH, --real youth, --youth ofmind, youth of heart, youth of soul. Lithe and supple as he moved beforeyou, with the eye to which light or dew sprang at once from a naturevibrating to every lofty, every tender thought, he seemed more thanyoung, --the incarnation of youth. 

Darrell took to him at once. Amidst all the engagements crowded on theimportant man, he contrived to see Lionel daily. And what may seemstrange, Guy Darrell felt more at home with Lionel Haughton than with anyof his own contemporaries, --than even with Alban Morley. To the last, indeed, he opened speech with less reserve of certain portions of thepast, or of certain projects in the future. But still, even there, headopted a tone of half-playful, half-mournful satire, which might be initself disguise. Alban Morley, with all his good qualities, was a man ofthe world; as a man of the world, Guy Darrell talked to him. But it wasonly a very small part of Guy Darrell the Man, of which the world couldsay "mine. "

To Lionel he let out, as if involuntarily, the more amiable, tender, poetic attributes of his varying, complex, uncomprehended character; notprofessedly confiding, but not taking pains to conceal. Hearing whatworldlings would call "Sentiment" in Lionel, he seemed to glide softlydown to Lionel's own years and talk "sentiment" in return. After all, this skilled lawyer, this noted politician, had a great dash of the boystill in him. Reader, did you ever meet a really clever man who had not?

CHAPTER VIII. 

 Saith a very homely proverb (pardon its vulgarity), "You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. " But a sow's ear is a much finer work of art than a silk purse; and grand, indeed, the mechanician who could make a sow's ear out of a silk purse, or conjure into creatures of flesh and blood the sarcenet and /tulle/ of a London drawing-room. 

"Mamma, " asked Honoria Carr Vipont, "what sort of a person was Mrs. Darrell?"

"She was not in our set, my dear, " answered Lady Selina. "The VipontCrookes are just one of those connections with which, though of courseone is civil to all connections, one is more or less intimate accordingas they take after the Viponts or after the Crookes. Poor woman! shedied just before Mr. Darrell entered Parliament and appeared in society. But I should say she was not an agreeable person. Not nice, " added LadySelina, after a pause, and conveying a world of meaning in thatconventional monosyllable. 

"I suppose she was very accomplished, very clever?"

"Quite the reverse, my dear. Mr. Darrell was exceedingly young when hemarried, scarcely of age. She was not the sort of woman to suit him. "

"But at least she must have been very much attached to him, very proud ofhim?"

Lady Selina glanced aside from her work, and observed her daughter'sface, which evinced an animation not usual to a young lady of a breedingso lofty, and a mind so well disciplined. 

"I don't think, " said Lady Selina, "that she was proud of him. She wouldhave been proud of his station, or rather of that to which his fame andfortune would have raised her, had she lived to enjoy it. But for a fewyears after her marriage they were very poor; and though his rise at thebar was sudden and brilliant, he was long wholly absorbed in hisprofession, and lived in Bloomsbury. Mrs. Darrell was not proud of that. The Crookes are generally fine, give themselves airs, marry into greathouses if they can: but we can't naturalize them; they always remainCrookes, --useful connections, very! Carr says we have not a moreuseful, --but third-rate, my dear. All the Crookes are bad wives, becausethey are never satisfied with their own homes, but are always trying toget into great people's homes. Not very long before she died, Mrs. Darrell took her friend and relation, Mrs. Lyndsay, to live with her. I suspect it was not from affection, or any great consideration for Mrs. Lyndsay's circumstances (which were indeed those of actual destitution, till--thanks to Mr. Darrell--she won her lawsuit), but simply because shelooked to Mrs. Lyndsay to get her into our set. Mrs. Lyndsay was a greatfavourite with all of us, charming manners, --perfectly correct, too, --thorough Vipont, thorough gentlewoman, but artful! Oh, so artful! Shehumoured poor Mrs. Darrell's absurd vanity; but she took care not toinjure herself. Of course, Darrell's wife, and a Vipont--though only aVipont Crooke--had free passport into the outskirts of good society, thegreat parties, and so forth. But there it stopped; even I should havebeen compromised if I had admitted into our set a woman who was bent oncompromising herself. Handsome, in a bad style, not the Vipont/tournure/; and not only silly and flirting, but (we are alone, keep thesecret) decidedly vulgar, my dear. "

"You amaze me! How such a man--" Honoria stopped, colouring up to thetemples. 

"Clever men, " said Lady Selina, "as a general rule, do choose the oddestwives! The cleverer a man is, the more easily, I do believe, a woman cantake him in. However, to do Mr. Darrell justice, he has been taken inonly once. After Mrs. Darrell's death, Mrs. Lyndsay, I suspect, triedher chance, but failed. Of course, she would not actually stay in thesame house with a widower who was then young, and who had only to get ridof a wife to whom one was forced to be shy in order to be received intoour set with open arms, and, in short, to be of the very best monde. Mr. Darrell came into Parliament immensely rich (a legacy from an old EastIndian, besides his own professional savings); took the house he has now, close by us. Mrs. Lyndsay was obliged to retire to a cottage at Fulham. But as she professed to be a second mother to poor Matilda Darrell, shecontrived to be very much at Carlton Gardens; her daughter Caroline wasnearly always there, profiting by Matilda's masters; and I did think thatMrs. Lyndsay would have caught Darrell, but your papa said 'No, ' and hewas right, as he always is. Nevertheless, Mrs. Lyndsay would have beenan excellent wife to a public man: so popular; knew the world so well;never made enemies till she made an enemy of poor dear Montfort, but thatwas natural. By the by, I must write to Caroline. Sweet creature! buthow absurd, shutting herself up as if she were fretting for Montfort!That's so like her mother, --heartless, but full of propriety. "

Here Carr Vipont and Colonel Morley entered the room. "We have just leftDarrell, " said Carr; "he will dine here to-day, to meet our cousin Alban. I have asked his cousin, young Haughton, and--and, your cousins, Selina(a small party of cousins); so lucky to find Darrell disengaged. "

"I ventured to promise, " said the Colonel, addressing Honoria in an undervoice, "that Darrell should hear you play Beethoven. "

HONORIA. --"Is Mr. Darrell so fond of music, then?"

COLONEL MORLEY. --"One would not have thought it. He keeps a secretary atFawley who plays the flute. There's something very interesting aboutDarrell. I wish you could hear his ideas on marriage and domestic life:more freshness of heart than in the young men one meets nowadays. It maybe prejudice; but it seems to me that the young fellows of the presentrace, if more sober and staid than we were, are sadly wanting incharacter and spirit, --no warm blood in their veins. But I should nottalk thus to a demoiselle who has all those young fellows at her feet. "

"Oh, " said Lady Selina, overhearing, and with a half laugh, "Honoriathinks much as you do: she finds the young men so insipid; all like oneanother, --the same set phrases. "

"The same stereotyped ideas, " added Honoria, moving away with a gestureof calm disdain. 

"A very superior mind hers, " whispered the Colonel to Carr Vipont. "She'll never marry a fool. "

Guy Darrell was very pleasant at "the small family dinnerparty. " Carrwas always popular in his manners; the true old House of Commons manner, which was very like that of a gentleman-like public school. Lady Selina, as has been said before, in her own family circle was natural and genial. Young Carr, there, without his wife, more pretentious than his father, --being a Lord of the Admiralty, --felt a certain awe of Darrell, and spokelittle, which was much to his own credit and to the general conviviality. The other members of the symposium, besides Lady Selina, Honoria, and ayounger sister, were but Darrell, Lionel, and Lady Selina's two cousins;elderly peers, --one with the garter, the other in the Cabinet, --jovialmen who had been wild fellows once in the same mess-room, and still jokedat each other whenever they met as they met now. Lionel, who rememberedVance's description of Lady Selina, and who had since heard her spoken ofin society as a female despot who carried to perfection the arts by whichdespots flourish, with majesty to impose, and caresses to deceive--anAurungzebe in petticoats--was sadly at a loss to reconcile suchportraiture with the good-humoured, motherly woman who talked to him ofher home, her husband, her children, with open fondness and becomingpride, and who, far from being so formidably clever as the world cruellygave out, seemed to Lionel rather below par in her understanding; strikefrom her talk its kindliness, and the residue was very like twaddle. After dinner, various members of the Vipont family dropped in, --askedimpromptu by Carr or by Lady Selina, in hasty three-cornered notes, totake that occasion of renewing their acquaintance with theirdistinguished connection. By some accident, amongst those invited therewere but few young single ladies; and, by some other accident, those fewwere all plain. Honoria Vipont was unequivocally the belle of the room. It could not but be observed that Darrell seemed struck with her, --talkedwith her more than with any other lady; and when she went to the piano, and played that great air of Beethoven's, in which music seems to havegot into a knot that only fingers the most artful can unravel, Darrellremained in his seat aloof and alone, listening no doubt with ravishedattention. But just as the air ended, and Honoria turned round to lookfor him, he was gone. 

Lionel did not linger long after him. The gay young man went thence toone of those vast crowds which seemed convened for a practical parody ofMr. Bentham's famous proposition, --contriving the smallest happiness forthe greatest number. 

It was a very good house, belonging to a very great person. ColonelMorley had procured an invitation for Lionel, and said, "Go; you shouldbe seen there. " Colonel Morley had passed the age of growing intosociety: no such cares for the morrow could add a cubit to hisconventional stature. One amongst a group of other young men by thedoorway, Lionel beheld Darrell, who had arrived before him, listening toa very handsome young lady, with an attention quite as earnest as thatwhich had gratified the superior mind of the well-educated Honoria, --avery handsome young lady certainly, but not with a superior mind, norsupposed hitherto to have found young gentlemen "insipid. " Doubtless shewould henceforth do so. A few minutes after Darrell was listening again;this time to another young lady, generally called "fast. " If hisattentions to her were not marked, hers to him were. She rattled on tohim volubly, laughed, pretty hoyden, at her own sallies, and seemed atlast so to fascinate him by her gay spirits that he sat down by her side;and the playful smile on his lips--lips that had learned to be so gravelyfirm--showed that he could enter still into the mirth of childhood; forsurely to the time-worn man the fast young lady must have seemed but agiddy child. Lionel was amused. Could this be the austere recluse whomhe had left in the shades of Fawley? Guy Darrell, at his years, with hisdignified repute, the object of so many nods, and becks, and wreathedsmiles, --could he descend to be that most frivolous of characters, a malecoquet? Was he in earnest? Was his vanity duped? Looking again, Lionelsaw in his kinsman's face a sudden return of the sad despondentexpression which had moved his own young pity in the solitudes of Fawley. But in a moment the man roused himself: the sad expression was gone. Hadthe girl's merry laugh again chased it away? But Lionel's attention wasnow drawn from Darrell himself to the observations murmured round him, ofwhich Darrell was the theme. 

"Yes, he is bent on marrying again! I have it from Alban Morley: immensefortune; and so young-looking, any girl might fall in love with such eyesand forehead; besides, what a jointure he could settle! . . . Do lookat that girl, Flora Vyvyan, trying to make a fool of him. She can'tappreciate that kind of man, and she would not be caught by his money;does not want it. . . . I wonder she is not afraid of him. He iscertainly quizzing her. . . . The men think her pretty; I don't. . . . They say he is to return to Parliament, and have a place in theCabinet. . . . No! he has no children living: very natural he shouldmarry again. . . . A nephew!--you are quite mistaken. Young Haughtonis no nephew: a very distant connection; could not expect to be the heir. . . . It was given out, though, at Paris. The Duchess thought so, and so did Lady Jane. They'll not be so civil to young Haughton now. . . . Hush--"

Lionel, wishing to hear no more, glided by, and penetrated farther intothe throng. And then, as he proceeded, with those last words on his ear, the consciousness came upon him that his position had undergone a change. Difficult to define it; to an ordinary bystander people would have seemedto welcome him cordially as ever. The gradations of respect in politesociety are so exquisitely delicate, that it seems only by a sort ofmagnetism that one knows from day to day whether one has risen ordeclined. A man has lost high office, patronage, power, never perhaps toregain them. People don't turn their backs on him; their smiles are asgracious, their hands as flatteringly extended. But that man would bedull as a rhinoceros if he did not feel--as every one who accosts himfeels--that he has descended in the ladder. So with all else. Lose evenyour fortune, it is not the next day in a London drawing-room that yourfriends look as if you were going to ask them for five pounds. Wait ayear or so for that. But if they have just heard you are ruined, youwill feel that they have heard it, let them bow ever so courteously, smile ever so kindly. Lionel at Paris, in the last year or so, had beenmore than fashionable: he had been the fashion, --courted, run after, petted, quoted, imitated. That evening he felt as an author may feel whohas been the rage, and without fault of his own is so no more. The raysthat had gilded him had gone back to the orb that lent. And they whowere most genial still to Lionel Haughton were those who still mostrespected thirty-five thousand pounds a year--in Guy Darrell!

Lionel was angry with himself that he felt galled. But in his woundedpride there was no mercenary regret, --only that sort of sickness whichcomes to youth when the hollowness of worldly life is first made clear toit. From the faces round him there fell that glamour by which the /amourpropre/ is held captive in large assemblies, where the /amour propre/ isflattered. "Magnificent, intelligent audience, " thinks the applaudedactor. "Delightful party, " murmurs the worshipped beauty. Glamour!glamour! Let the audience yawn while the actor mouths; let the partyneglect the beauty to adore another, and straightway the "magnificentaudience" is an "ignorant public, " and the "delightful party" a"heartless world. "

CHAPTER IX. 

 Escaped from a London drawing-room, flesh once more tingles and blood flows. --Guy Darrell explains to Lionel Haughton why he holds it a duty to be an old fool. 

Lionel Haughton glided through the disenchanted rooms, and breathed along breath of relief when he found himself in the friendless streets. 

As he walked slow and thoughtful on, he suddenly felt a hand upon hisshoulder, turned, and saw Darrell. 

"Give me your arm, my dear Lionel; I am tired out. What a lovely night!What sweet scorn in the eyes of those stars that we have neglected foryon flaring lights. "

LIONEL. --"Is it scorn? is it pity? is it but serene indifference?"

DARRELL. --"As we ourselves interpret: if scorn be present in our ownhearts, it will be seen in the disc of Jupiter. Man, egotist though hebe, exacts sympathy from all the universe. Joyous, he says to the sun, 'Life-giver, rejoice with me. ' Grieving, he says to the moon, 'Pensiveone, thou sharest my sorrow. ' Hope for fame; a star is its promise!

"Mourn for the dead; a star is the land of reunion! Say to earth, 'I havedone with thee;' to Time, 'Thou hast nought to bestow;' and all spacecries aloud, 'The earth is a speck, thine inheritance infinity. Timemelts while thou sighest. The discontent of a mortal is the instinctthat proves thee immortal. ' Thus construing Nature, Nature is ourcompanion, our consoler. Benign as the playmate, she lends herself toour shifting humours. Serious as the teacher, she responds to thesteadier inquiries of reason. Mystic and hallowed as the priestess, shekeeps alive by dim oracles that spiritual yearning within us, in which, from savage to sage, --through all dreams, through all creeds, --thrillsthe sense of a link with Divinity. Never, therefore, while conferringwith Nature, is Man wholly alone, nor is she a single companion withuniform shape. Ever new, ever various, she can pass from gay to severe, from fancy to science, --quick as thought passes from the dance of a leaf, from the tint of a rainbow, to the theory of motion, the problem oflight. But lose Nature, forget or dismiss her, make companions, byhundreds, of men who ignore her, and I will not say with the poet, 'Thisis solitude. ' But in the commune, what stale monotony, what wearysameness!"

Thus Darrell continued to weave together sentence with sentence, theintermediate connection of meaning often so subtle that when put down onpaper it requires effort to discern it. But it was his peculiar gift tomake clear when spoken what in writing would seem obscure. Look, manner, each delicate accent in a voice wonderfully distinct in its unrivalledmelody, all so aided the sense of mere words that it is scarcelyextravagant to say he might have talked an unknown language, and alistener would have understood. But, understood or not, those sweetintonations it was such delight to hear that any one with nerves alive tomusic would have murmured, "Talk on forever. " And in this gift lay onemain secret of the man's strange influence over all who came familiarlyinto his intercourse; so that if Darrell had ever bestowed confidentialintimacy on any one not by some antagonistic idiosyncrasy steeled againstits charm, and that intimacy had been withdrawn, a void never to berefilled must have been left in the life thus robbed. 

Stopping at his door, as Lionel, rapt by the music, had forgotten thepain of the revery so bewitchingly broken, Darrell detained the hand heldout to him, and said, "No, not yet; I have something to say to you: comein; let me say it now. "

Lionel bowed his head, and in surprised conjecture followed his kinsmanup the lofty stairs into the same comfortless stately room that has beenalready described. When the servant closed the door, Darrell sank into achair. Fixing his eye upon Lionel with almost parental kindness, andmotioning his young cousin to sit by his side, close, he thus began, "Lionel, before I was your age I was married; I was a father. I amlonely and childless now. My life has been moulded by a solemnobligation which so few could comprehend that I scarce know a man livingbeside yourself to whom I would frankly confide it. Pride of family is acommon infirmity, --often petulant with the poor, often insolent with therich; but rarely, perhaps, out of that pride do men construct a positivebinding duty, which at all self-sacrifice should influence the practicalchoice of life. As a child, before my judgment could discern how much ofvain superstition may lurk in our reverence for the dead, my whole heartwas engaged in a passionate dream, which my waking existence became vowedto realize. My father!--my lip quivers, my eyes moisten as I recall him, even now, --my father!--I loved him so intensely!--the love of childhood, how fearfully strong it is! All in him was so gentle, yet so sensitive, --chivalry without its armour. I was his constant companion: he spoke tome unreservedly, as a poet to his muse. I wept at his sorrows; I chafedat his humiliations. He talked of ancestors as he thought of them; tohim they were beings like the old Lares, --not dead in graves, but imagesever present on household hearths. Doubtless he exaggerated their worth, as their old importance. Obscure, indeed, in the annals of empire, theirdeeds and their power, their decline and fall. Not so thought he; theywere to his eyes the moon-track in the ocean of history, --light on thewaves over which they had gleamed, --all the ocean elsewhere dark! Withhim thought I; as my father spoke, his child believed. But what to theeyes of the world was this inheritor of a vaunted name?--a threadbare, slighted, rustic pedant; no station in the very province in whichmouldered away the last lowly dwelling-place of his line, --by lineagehigh above most nobles, in position below most yeomen. He had learning;he had genius: but the studies to which they were devoted only served yetmore to impoverish his scanty means, and led rather to ridicule than tohonour. Not a day but what I saw on his soft features the smart of afresh sting, the gnawing of a new care. Thus, as a boy, feeling inmyself a strength inspired by affection, I came to him one day as he satgrieving, and kneeling to him, said, 'Father, courage yet a little while;I shall soon be a man, and I swear to devote myself as man to revive theold fading race so prized by you; to rebuild the House that, by you soloved, is loftier in my eyes than all the heraldry of kings. ' And myfather's face brightened, and his voice blessed me; and I rose up-ambitious!" Darrell paused, heaved a short, quick sigh, and then rapidlycontinued, "I was fortunate at the University. That was a day when chiefs of partylooked for recruits amongst young men who had given the proofs and wonthe first-fruits of emulation and assiduity; for statesmanship then wasdeemed an art which, like that of war, needs early discipline. I hadscarcely left college when I was offered a seat in Parliament by the headof the Viponts, an old Lord Montfort. I was dazzled but for one moment;I declined the next. The fallen House of Darrell needed wealth; andParliamentary success, in its higher honours, often requires wealth, --never gives it. It chanced that I had a college acquaintance with ayoung man named Vipont Crooke. His grandfather, one of the numberlessViponts, had been compelled to add the name of Crooke to his own, onsucceeding to the property of some rich uncle, who was one of thenumberless Crookes. I went with this college acquaintance to visit theold Lord Montfort, at his villa near London, and thence to the country-house of the Vipont Crookes. I stayed at the last two or three weeks. While there, I received a letter from the elder Fairthorn, my father'sbailiff, entreating me to come immediately to Fawley, hinting at somegreat calamity. On taking leave of my friend and his family, somethingin the manner of his sister startled and pained me, --an evidentconfusion, a burst of tears, --I know not what. I had never sought towin her affections. I had an ideal of the woman I could love, --it didnot resemble her. On reaching Fawley, conceive the shock that awaitedme. My father was like one heart-stricken. The principal mortgagee wasabout to foreclose, --Fawley about to pass forever from the race of theDarrells. I saw that the day my father was driven from the old housewould be his last on earth. What means to save him?--how raise thepitiful sum--but a few thousands--by which to release from the spoiler'sgripe those barren acres which all the lands of the Seymour or the Gowercould never replace in my poor father's eyes? My sole income was acollege fellowship, adequate to all my wants, but useless for sale orloan. I spent the night in vain consultation with Fairthorn. Thereseemed not a hope. Next morning came a letter from young Vipont Crooke. It was manly and frank, though somewhat coarse. With the consent of hisparents he offered me his sister's hand, and a dowry of L10, 000. Hehinted, in excuse for his bluntness, that, perhaps from motives ofdelicacy, if I felt a preference for his sister, I might not deem myselfrich enough to propose, and--but it matters not what else he said. Youforesee the rest. My father's life could be saved from despair; hisbeloved home be his shelter to the last. That dowry would more thancover the paltry debt upon the lands. I gave myself not an hour topause. I hastened back to the house to which fate had led me. But, "said Darrell, proudly, "do not think I was base enough, even with suchexcuses, to deceive the young lady. I told her what was true; that Icould not profess to her the love painted by romance-writers and poets;but that I loved no other, and that if she deigned to accept my hand, I should studiously consult her happiness and gratefully confide to hermy own. "

"I said also, what was true, that if she married me, ours must be forsome years a life of privation and struggle; that even the interest ofher fortune must be devoted to my father while he lived, though everyshilling of its capital would be settled on herself and her children. How I blessed her when she accepted me, despite my candour!--howearnestly I prayed that I might love and cherish and requite her!"Darrell paused, in evident suffering. "And, thank Heaven! I havenothing on that score wherewith to reproach myself; and the strength ofthat memory enabled me to bear and forbear more than otherwise would havebeen possible to my quick spirit and my man's heart. My dear father!his death was happy: his home was saved; he never knew at what sacrificeto his son! He was gladdened by the first honours my youth achieved. Hewas resigned to my choice of a profession, which, though contrary to hisantique prejudices, that allowed to the representative of the Darrells noprofession but the sword, still promised the wealth which would securehis name from perishing. He was credulous of my future, as if I haduttered not a vow, but a prediction. He had blessed my union, withoutforeseeing its sorrows. He had embraced my first-born, --true, it was agirl, but it was one link onward from ancestors to posterity. And almosthis last words were these: 'You will restore the race; you will revivethe name! and my son's children will visit the antiquary's grave, andlearn gratitude to him for all that his idle lessons taught to yourhealthier vigour. ' And I answered, 'Father, your line shall not perishfrom the land; and when I am rich and great, and lordships spread farround the lowly hall that your life ennobled, I will say to yourgrandchildren, 'Honour ye and your son's sons, while a Darrell yet treadsthe earth, honour him to whom I owe every thought which nerved me to toilfor what you who come after me may enjoy. '

"And so the old man, whose life had been so smileless, died smiling. "

By this time Lionel had stolen Darrell's hand into his own--his heartswelling with childlike tenderness, and the tears rolling down hischeeks. 

Darrell gently kissed his young kinsman's forehead, and, extricatinghimself from Lionel's clasp, paced the room, and spoke on while pacingit. 

"I made, then, a promise; it is not kept. No child of mine survives tobe taught reverence to my father's grave. My wedded life was not happy:its record needs no words. Of two children born to me, both are gone. My son went first. I had thrown my life's life into him, --a boy ofenergy, of noble promise. 'T was for him I began to build that baffledfabric, 'Sepulchri immemor. ' For him I bought, acre on acre, all theland within reach of Fawley, -lands twelve miles distant. I had meant tofill up the intervening space, to buy out a mushroom earl whose woods andcornfields lie between. I was scheming the purchase, scrawling on thecounty map, when they brought the news that the boy I had just taken backto school was dead, --drowned bathing on a calm summer eve. No, Lionel. I must go on. That grief I have wrestled with, --conquered. I waswidowed then. A daughter still left, --the first-born, whom my father hadblest on his death-bed. I transferred all my love, all my hopes, to her. I had no vain preference for male heirs. Is a race less pure that runson through the female line? Well, my son's death was merciful comparedto--" Again Darrell stopped, again hurried on. "Enough! all isforgiven in the grave! I was then still in the noon of man's life, freeto form new ties. Another grief that I cannot tell you; it is not allconquered yet. And by that grief the last verdure of existence was soblighted that--that--in short, I had no heart for nuptial altars, for thesocial world. Years went by. Each year I said, 'Next year the woundwill be healed; I have time yet. ' Now age is near, the grave not far;now, if ever, I must fulfil the promise that cheered my father's death-bed. Nor does that duty comprise all my motives. If I would regainhealthful thought, manly action, for my remaining years, I must feel thatone haunting memory is exorcised and forever laid at rest. It can be soonly, --whatever my risk of new cares, whatever the folly of the hazardat my age, --be so only by--by--" Once more Darrell paused, fixed hiseyes steadily on Lionel, and, opening his arms, cried out, "Forgive me, my noble Lionel, that I am not contented with an heir like you; and donot you mock at the old man who dreams that woman may love him yet, andthat his own children may inherit his father's home. "

Lionel sprang to the breast that opened to him; and if Darrell hadplanned how best to remove from the young man's mind forever thepossibility of one selfish pang, no craft could have attained his objectlike that touching confidence before which the disparities between youthand age literally vanished. And, both made equal, both elevated alike, verily I know not which at the moment felt the elder or the younger! Twonoble hearts, intermingled in one emotion, are set free from all timesave the present: par each with each, they meet as brothers twin-born.