"Fair guest," said he, with a grace and tenderness of manner which, when he pleased it, could be ineffably bewitching--"teach me some art by which in future rather to detain than to scare away the presence in which a duller age than mine could still recognise the charms that subdue the young." He led her back gently to the seat she had deserted--placed himself next to her--addressed a few cordial queries to Waife about his health and comforts--and then said: "You must not leave me for some days yet. I have written by this post to my kinsman, Lionel Haughton. I have refused to be his amba.s.sador at a court in which, by all the laws of nations, he is bound to submit himself to his conqueror.
I cannot even hope that he may escape with his freedom. No! chains for life! Thrice happy, indeed, if that be the merciful sentence you inflict."
He raised Sophy"s hand to his lips as he ended, and before she could even quite comprehend the meaning of his words--so was she startled, confused, incredulous of such sudden change in fate--the door had closed on Darrell, and Waife had clasped her to his breast, murmuring, "Is not Providence kind?"
Darrell rejoined the scholar. "George," said he, "be kind enough to tell Alban that you showed me his letter. Be kind enough also to write to Lady Montfort, and say that I gratefully acknowledge her wish to repair to me those losses which have left me to face age and the grave alone.
Tell her that her old friend (you remember, George, I knew her as a child) sees in that wish the same sweet goodness of heart which soothed him when his son died and his daughter fled. Add that her wish is gratified. To that marriage in which she compa.s.sionately foresaw the best solace left to my bereaved and baffled existence--to that marriage I give my consent."
"You do! Oh, Mr. Darrell, how I honour you!"
"Nay, I no more deserve honour for consenting than I should have deserved contempt if I had continued to refuse. To do what I deemed right is not more my wish now than it was twelve hours ago. To what so sudden a change of resolve, in one who changes resolves very rarely, may be due, whether to Lady Montfort, to Alban, or to that metaphysical skill with which you wound into my reason, and compelled me to review all its judgments, I do not attempt to determine; yet I thought I had no option but the course I had taken. No; it is fair to yourself to give you the chief credit; you made me desire, you made me resolve, to find an option--I have found one. And now pay your visit where mine has been just paid. It will be three days, I suppose, before Lionel, having joined his new regiment at * * *, can be here. And then it will be weeks yet, I believe, before his regiment sails; and I"m all for short courtships."
CHAPTER VI.
FAIRTHORN FRIGHTENS SOPHY. SIR ISAAC IS INVITED BY DARRELL, AND FORMS ONE OF A FAMILY CIRCLE.
Such a sweet voice in singing breaks out from yon leafless beeches!
Waife hears it at noon from his window. Hark! Sophy has found song once more.
She is seated on a garden bench, looking across the lake towards the gloomy old Manor-house and the tall spectre palace beside it. Mrs.
Morley is also on the bench, hard at work on her sketch; Fairthorn prowls through the thickets behind, wandering restless, and wretched, and wrathful beyond all words to describe. He hears that voice Singing; he stops short, perfectly rabid with indignation. "Singing," he muttered, "singing in triumph, and glowering at the very House she dooms to destruction. Worse than Nero striking his lyre amidst the conflagration of Rome!" By-and-by Sophy, who somehow or other cannot sit long in any place, and tires that day of any companion, wanders away from the lake and comes right upon Fairthorn. Hailing, in her unutterable secret bliss, the musician who had so often joined her rambles in the days of unuttered secret sadness, she sprang towards him, with welcome and mirth in a face that would have lured Diogenes out of his tub. Fairthorn recoiled sidelong, growling forth, "Don"t--you had better not!"--grinned the most savage grin, showing all his teeth like a wolf; and as she stood, mute with wonder, perhaps with fright, he slunk edgeways off, as if aware of his own murderous inclinations, turning his head more than once, and shaking it at her; then, with the wonted mystery which enveloped his exits, he was gone! vanished behind a crag, or amidst a bush, or into a hole--Heaven knows; but, like the lady in the Siege of Corinth, who warned the renegade Alp of his approaching end, he was "gone."
Twice again that day Sophy encountered the enraged musician; each time the same menacing aspect and weird disappearance.
"Is Mr. Fairthorn ever a little-odd?" asked Sophy timidly of George Morley.
"Always," answered George, dryly.
Sophy felt relieved at that reply. Whatever is habitual in a man"s manner, however unpleasant, is seldom formidable. Still Sophy could not help saying: "I wish poor Sir Isaac were here!"
"Do you?" said a soft voice behind her; "and pray, who is Sir Isaac?"
The speaker was Darrell, who had come forth with the resolute intent to see more of Sophy, and make himself as amiably social as he could. Guy Darrell could never be kind by halves.
"Sir Isaac is the wonderful dog you have heard me describe," replied George.
"Would he hurt my doe if he came here?" asked Darrell.
"Oh, no!" cried Sophy; "he never hurts anything. He once found a wounded hare, and he brought it in his mouth to us so tenderly, and seemed so anxious that we should cure it, which grandfather did, and the hare would sometimes hurt him, but he never hurt the hare."
Said George sonorously:
"Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros."
Darrell drew Sophy"s arm into his own. "Will you walk back to the lake with me," said he, "and help me to feed the swans? George, send your servant express for Sir Isaac. I am impatient to make his acquaintance."
Sophy"s hand involuntarily pressed Darrell"s arm. She looked up into his face with innocent, joyous grat.i.tude; feeling at once, and as by magic, that her awe of him was gone.
Darrell and Sophy rambled thus together for more than an hour. He sought to draw out her mind, unaware to herself; he succeeded. He was struck with a certain simple poetry of thought which pervaded her ideas--not artificial sentimentality, but a natural tendency to detect in all life a something of delicate or beautiful which lies hid from the ordinary sense. He found, thanks to Lady Montfort, that, though far from learned, she was more acquainted with literature than he had supposed. And sometimes he changed colour, or breathed his short quick sigh, when he recognised her familiarity with pa.s.sages in his favourite authors which he himself had commended, or read aloud, to the Caroline of old.
The next day Waife, who seemed now recovered as by enchantment, walked forth with George, Darrell again with Sophy. Sir Isaac arrived--Immense joy; the doe b.u.t.ts Sir Isaac, who retreating, stands on his hind legs, and, having possessed himself of Waife"s crutch, presents fire; the doe in her turn retreats;--half an hour afterwards doe and dog are friends.
Waife is induced, without much persuasion, to join the rest of the party at dinner. In the evening, all (Fairthorn excepted) draw round the fire.
Waife is entreated by George to read a scene or two out of Shakespeare.
He selects the latter portion of "King Lear." Darrell, who never was a playgoer, and who, to his shame be it said, had looked very little into Shakespeare since he left college, was wonderstruck. He himself read beautifully--all great orators, I suppose, do; but his talent was not mimetic--not imitative; he could never have been an actor--never thrown himself into existences wholly alien or repugnant to his own. Grave or gay, stern or kind, Guy Darrell, though often varying, was always Guy Darrell.
But when Waife was once in that magical world of art, Waife was gone--nothing left of him;--the part lived as if there were no actor to it;--it was the Fool--it was Lear.
For the first time Darrell felt what a grand creature a grand actor really is--what a luminous, unconscious critic bringing out beauties of which no commentator ever dreamed! When the reading was over, talk still flowed; the gloomy old hearth knew the charm of a home circle. All started incredulous when the clock struck one. Just as Sophy was pa.s.sing to the door, out from behind the window curtain glared a vindictive, spiteful eye. Fairthorn made a move at her, which "tis a pity Waife did not see--it would have been a study for Caliban. She uttered a little scream.
"What"s the matter?" cried the host.
"Nothing," said she quickly--far too generous to betray the hostile oddities of the musician. "Sir Isaac was in my way--that was all."
"Another evening we must have Fairthorn"s flute," said Darrell. "What a pity he was not here to-night!--he would have enjoyed such reading--no one more."
Said Mrs. Morley, "He was here once or twice during the evening; but he vanished!"
"Vanishing seems his forte," said George.
Darrell looked annoyed. It was his peculiarity to resent any jest, however slight, against an absent friend; and at that moment his heart was perhaps more warmed towards d.i.c.k Fairthorn than to any man living.
If he had not determined to be as amiable and mild towards his guests as his nature would permit, probably George might have had the flip of a sarcasm which would have tingled for a month. But as it was, Darrell contented himself with saying gravely:
"No, George; Fairthorn"s foible is vanishing; his forte is fidelity. If my fortune were to vanish, Fairthorn would never disappear; and that"s more than I would say if I were a King, and Fairthorn--a Bishop!"
After that extraordinary figure of speech, "Good-nights" were somewhat hastily exchanged; and Fairthorn was left; behind the curtain with feelings towards all his master"s guests as little, it is to be hoped, like those of a Christian Bishop towards his fellow-creatures, as they possibly could be.
CHAPTER VII.
"Domus et placens Uxor."
FAIRTHORN FINDS NOTHING _PLACENS_ IN THE _UXOR_, TO WHOM _DOMUS_ IS INDEBTED FOR ITS DESTRUCTION.
Another day! Lionel is expected to arrive an hour or two after noon.
Darrell is in his room--his will once more before him. He has drawn up a rough copy of the codicil by which Fawley is to pa.s.s away, and the name of Darrell be consigned to the care of grateful Learning, linked with prizes and fellowships;--a public property--lost for ever to private representatives of its sepulchred bearers. Preparations for departure from the doomed dwelling-house have begun. There are large boxes on the floor; and favourite volumes--chiefly in science or cla.s.sics--lie piled beside them for selection.
What is really at the bottom of Guy Darrell"s heart? Does he feel reconciled to his decision? Is the virtue of his new self-sacrifice in itself a consoling reward? Is that cordial urbanity, that cheerful kindness, by which he has been yet more endearing himself to his guests, sincere or a.s.sumed? As he throws aside his pen, and leans his cheek on his hand, the expression of his countenance may perhaps best answer those questions. It has more unmingled melancholy than was habitual to it before, even when in his gloomiest moods; but it is a melancholy much more soft and subdued; it is the melancholy of resignation--that of a man who has ceased a long struggle--paid his offering to the appeased Nemesis, in casting into the sea the thing that had been to him the dearest.
But in resignation, when complete, there is always a strange relief.
Despite that melancholy, Darrell is less unhappy than he has been for years. He feels as if a suspense has pa.s.sed--a load been lifted from his breast. After all, he has secured, to the best of his judgment, the happiness of the living, and, in relinquishing the object to which his own life has been vainly devoted, and immolating the pride attached to it, he has yet, to use his own words, paid his "dues to the dead." No descendant from a Jasper Losely and a Gabrielle Desmarets will sit as mistress of the house in which Loyalty and Honour had garnered, with the wrecks of fortune, the memories of knightly fame--nor perpetuate the name of Darrell through children whose blood has a source in the sink of infamy and fraud. Nor was this consolation that of a culpable pride; it was bought by the abdication of a pride that had opposed its prejudices to living worth--to living happiness. Sophy would not be punished for sins not her own--Lionel not barred from a prize that earth never might replace. What mattered to them a mouldering, old, desolate manor-house--a few hundreds of pitiful acres? Their children would not be less blooming if their holiday summer-noons were not shaded by those darksome trees--nor less lively of wit if their school themes were signed in the name, not of Darrell, but Haughton.
A slight nervous knock at the door. Darrell has summoned Fairthorn; Fairthorn enters. Darrell takes up a paper; it contains minute instructions as to the demolition of the two buildings. The materials of the new pile may be disposed of, sold, carted away--anyhow, anywhere.
Those of the old house are sacred--not a brick to be carried from the precincts around it. No; from foundation to roof, all to be piously removed--to receive formal interment deep in the still bosom of the little lake, and the lake to be filled up and turfed over. The pictures and antiquities selected for the Darrell Museum are, of course, to be carefully transported to London--warehoused safely till the gift from owner to nation be legally ratified. The pictures and articles of less value will be sent to an auction. But when it came to the old family portraits in the Manorhouse, the old homely furniture, familiarised to sight and use and love from infancy, Darrell was at a loss; his invention failed. That question was reserved for further consideration.