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

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

Humour--strength's rich superfluity."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, I have," said the Colonel bluntly, "and very often! Everybody at my age has--except yourself. So like a man's observation, that,"

continued the Colonel with much tartness. "No man ever thinks another man capable of a profound and romantic sentiment!"

DARRELL.--"True; I own my shallow fault, and beg you ten thousand pardons. So then you really believe, from your own experience, that there is much in Vance's theory and your own very happy ill.u.s.tration?

Could we, after many years, turn back to the romance at the page at which we left off, we should--"

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

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

COLONEL MORLEY.--"Then, as you liked my former ill.u.s.tration, I will explain myself by another one more homely. In a room to which you are accustomed there is a piece of furniture, or an ornament, which so exactly suits the place that you say: 'The prettiest thing I ever saw!'

You go away--you return--the piece of furniture or the ornament has been moved into another room. You see it there, and you say: 'Bless me, is that the thing I so much admired!' The strange room does not suit it--losing its old a.s.sociations and accessories, it has lost its charm.

So it is with human beings--seen in one place, the place would be nothing without them; seen in another, the place without them would be all the better!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"His hand still free!" muttered the Colonel, pursuing his walk alone.

"Yes--but three days hence--O--What will he do with it?"

CHAPTER XVI.

GUY DARRELL'S DECISION.

Guy Darrell returned home from Carr Vipont's dinner at a late hour.

On his table was a note from Lady Adela's father, cordially inviting Darrell to pa.s.s the next week at his country-house; London was now emptying fast. On the table too was a parcel, containing a book which Darrell had lent to Miss Vyvyan some weeks ago, and a note from herself.

In calling at her father's house that morning, he had learned that Mr.

Vyvyan had suddenly resolved to take her into Switzerland, with the view of pa.s.sing the next winter in Italy. The room was filled with loungers of both s.e.xes. Darrell had stayed but a short time. The leave-taking had been somewhat formal--Flora unusually silent. He opened her note, and read the first lines listlessly; those that followed, with a changing cheek and an earnest eye. He laid down the note very gently, again took it up and reperused. Then he held it to the candle, and it dropped from his hand in tinder. "The innocent child," murmured he, with a soft paternal tenderness; "she knows not what she writes." He began to pace the room with his habitual restlessness when in solitary thought--often stopping--often sighing heavily. At length his face cleared-his lips became firmly set. He summoned his favourite servant. "Mills," said he, "I shall leave town on horseback as soon as the sun rises. Put what I may require for a day or two into the saddle-bags. Possibly, however I may be back by dinner-time. Call me at five o'clock, and then go round to the stables. I shall require no groom to attend me."

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

CHAPTER XVII.

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

GUY DARRELL To COLONEL MORLEY.

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XVIII.

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

Colonel Morley was not surprised (that, we know, he could not be, by any fresh experience of human waywardness and caprice), but much disturbed and much vexed by the unexpected nature of Darrell's communication.

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

said the Colonel, pushing straight to the point.

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

"What?" cried the Colonel.

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

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

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

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