I am ashamed to say I dont even know the titles of those works.
There were Popular Ballads on the Wars of the Roses; Darrelliana, consisting of traditional and other memorials of the Darrell family; Inquiry into the Origin of Legends Connected with Dragons; Hours amongst Monumental Brasses, and other ingenious lucubrations above the taste of the vulgar; some of them were even read at the Royal Society of Antiquaries. They cost much to print and publish. But I have heard my father, who was his bailiff, say that he was a pleasant man, and was fond of reciting old scraps of poetry, which he did with great energy; indeed, Mr. Darrell declares that it was the noticing, in his fathers animated and felicitous elocution, the effects that voice, look, and delivery can give to words, which made Mr. Darrell himself the fine speaker he is. But I can only recollect the antiquary as a very majestic gentleman, with a long pigtailawful, rather, not so much so as his son, but still awfuland so sad-looking; you would not have recovered your spirits for a week if you had seen him, especially when the old house wanted repairs, and he was thinking how he could pay for them!
Was Mr. Darrell, the present one, an only child?
Yes, and much with his father, whom he loved most dearly, and to this day he sighs if he has to mention his fathers name! He has old Mr. Darrells portrait over the chimney-piece in his own reading-room; and he had it in his own library in Carlton Gardens. Our Mr. Darrells mother was very pretty, even as I remember her: she died when he was about ten years old. And she too was a relation of yours,a Haughton by blood,but perhaps you will be ashamed of her, when I say she was a governess in a rich mercantile family. She had been left an orphan. I believe old Mr. Darrell (not that he was old then) married her because the Haughtons could or would do nothing for her, and because she was much snubbed and put upon, as I am told governesses usually are,married her because, poor as he was, he was still the head of both families, and bound to do what he could for decayed scions. The first governess a Darrell, ever married; but no true Darrell would have called that a mesalliance since she was still a Haughton and Fors non mutat genus,Chance does not change race.
But how comes it that the Haughtons, my grandfather Haughton, I suppose, would do nothing for his own kinswoman?
It was not your grandfather Robert Haughton, who was a generous man,he was then a mere youngster, hiding himself for debt,but your greatgrandfather, who was a hard man and on the turf. He never had money to give,only money for betting. He left the Haughton estates sadly clipped. But when Robert succeeded, he came forward, was godfather to our Mr. Darrell, insisted on sharing the expense of sending him to Eton, where he became greatly distinguished; thence to Oxford, where he increased his reputation; and would probably have done more for him, only Mr. Darrell, once his foot on the ladder, wanted no help to climb to the top.
Then my grandfather, Robert, still had the Haughton estates? Their last relics had not been yet transmuted by Mr. Cox into squares and a paragon?
No; the grand old mansion, though much dilapidated, with its park, though stripped of salable timber, was still left with a rental from farms that still appertained to the residence, which would have sufficed a prudent man for the luxuries of life, and allowed a reserve fund to clear off the mortgages gradually. Abstinence and self-denial for one or two generations would have made a property, daily rising in value as the metropolis advanced to its outskirts, a princely estate for a third. But Robert Haughton, though not on the turf, had a grand way of living; and while Guy Darrell went into the law to make a small patrimony a large fortune, your father, my dear young sir, was put into the Guards to reduce a large patrimonyinto Mr. Coxs distillery.
Lionel coloured, but remained silent.
Fairthorn, who was as unconscious in his zest of narrator that he was giving pain as an entomologist in his zest for collecting when he pins a live moth in his cabinet, resumed: Your father and Guy Darrell were warm friends as boys and youths. Guy was the elder of the two, and Charlie Haughton (I beg your pardon, he was always called Charlie) looked up to him as to an elder brother. Manys the scrape Guy got him out of; and many a pound, I believe, when Guy had some funds of his own, did Guy lend to Charlie.
I am very sorry to hear that, said Lionel, sharply. Fairthorn looked frightened. I m afraid I have made a blunder. Dont tell Mr. Darrell.
Certainly not; I promise. But how came my father to need this aid, and how came they at last to quarrel?
Your father Charlie became a gay young man about town, and very much the fashion. He was like you in person, only his forehead was lower, and his eye not so steady. Mr. Darrell studied the law in chambers. When Robert Haughton died, what with his debts, what with his fathers, and what with Charlies post-obits and I O Us, there seemed small chance indeed of saving the estate to the Haughtons. But then Mr. Darrell looked close into matters, and with such skill did he settle them that he removed the fear of foreclosure; and what with increasing the rental here and there, and replacing old mortgages by new at less interest, he contrived to extract from the property an income of nine hundred pounds a year to Charlie (three times the income Darrell had inherited himself), where before it had seemed that the debts were more than the assets. Foreseeing how much the land would rise in value, he then earnestly implored Charlie (who unluckily had the estate in fee-simple, as Mr. Darrell has this, to sell if he pleased) to live on his income, and in a few years a part of the property might be sold for building purposes, on terms that would save all the rest, with the old house in which Darrells and Haughtons both had once reared generations. Charlie promised, I know, and Ive no doubt, my dear young sir, quite sincerely; but all men are not granite! He took to gambling, incurred debts of honour, sold the farms one by one, resorted to usurers, and one night, after playing six hours at piquet, nothing was left for him but to sell all that remained to Mr. Cox the distiller, unknown to Mr. Darrell, who was then married himself, working hard, and living quite out of news of the fashionable world. Then Charlie Haughton sold out of the Guards, spent what he got for his commission, went into the Line; and finally, in a country town, in which I dont think he was quartered, but having gone there on some sporting speculation, was unwillingly detained, married
My mother! said Lionel, haughtily; and the best of women she is. What then?
Nothing, my dear young sir,nothing, except that Mr. Darrell never forgave it. He has his prejudices: this marriage shocked one of them.
Prejudice against my poor mother! I always supposed so! I wonder why? The most simple-hearted, inoffensive, affectionate woman.
I have not a doubt of it; but it is beginning to rain. Let us go home. I should like some luncheon: it breaks the day.
Tell me first why Mr. Darrell has a prejudice against my mother. I dont think that he has even seen her. Unaccountable caprice! Shocked him, too,what a word! Tell meI begI insist.
But you know, said Fairthorn, half piteously, half snappishly, that Mrs. Haughton was the daughter of a linendraper, and her fathers money got Charlie out of the county jail; and Mr. Darrell said, Sold even your name! My father heard him say it in the hall at Fawley. Mr. Darrell was there during a long vacation, and your father came to see him. Your father fired up, and they never saw each other, I believe, again.
My mother! said Lionel, haughtily; and the best of women she is. What then?
Nothing, my dear young sir,nothing, except that Mr. Darrell never forgave it. He has his prejudices: this marriage shocked one of them.
Prejudice against my poor mother! I always supposed so! I wonder why? The most simple-hearted, inoffensive, affectionate woman.
I have not a doubt of it; but it is beginning to rain. Let us go home. I should like some luncheon: it breaks the day.
Tell me first why Mr. Darrell has a prejudice against my mother. I dont think that he has even seen her. Unaccountable caprice! Shocked him, too,what a word! Tell meI begI insist.
But you know, said Fairthorn, half piteously, half snappishly, that Mrs. Haughton was the daughter of a linendraper, and her fathers money got Charlie out of the county jail; and Mr. Darrell said, Sold even your name! My father heard him say it in the hall at Fawley. Mr. Darrell was there during a long vacation, and your father came to see him. Your father fired up, and they never saw each other, I believe, again.
Lionel remained still as if thunder-stricken. Something in his mothers language and manner had at times made him suspect that she was not so well born as his father. But it was not the discovery that she was a tradesmans daughter that galled him; it was the thought that his father was bought for the altar out of the county jail! It was those cutting words, Sold even your name. His face, before very crimson, became livid; his head sank on his breast. He walked towards the old gloomy house by Fairthorns side, as one who, for the first time in life, feels on his heart the leaden weight of an hereditary shame.
CHAPTER VI
Showing how sinful it is in a man who does not care for his honour to beget children.
When Lionel saw Mr. Fairthorn devoting his intellectual being to the contents of a cold chicken-pie, he silently stepped out of the room and slunk away into a thick copse at the farthest end of the paddock. He longed to be alone. The rain descended, not heavily, but in penetrating drizzle; he did not feel it, or rather he felt glad that there was no gaudy mocking sunlight. He sat down forlorn in the hollows of a glen which the copse covered, and buried his face in his clasped hands.
Lionel Haughton, as the reader may have noticed, was no premature man,a manly boy, but still a habitant of the twilight, dreamy, shadow-land of boyhood. Noble elements were stirring fitfully within him, but their agencies were crude and undeveloped. Sometimes, through the native acuteness of his intellect, he apprehended truths quickly and truly as a man; then, again, through the warm haze of undisciplined tenderness, or the raw mists of that sensitive pride in which objects, small in themselves, loom large with undetected outlines, he fell back into the passionate dimness of a childs reasoning. He was intensely ambitious; Quixotic in the point of honour; dauntless in peril: but morbidly trembling at the very shadow of disgrace, as a foal, destined to be the war-horse and trample down levelled steel, starts in its tranquil pastures at the rustling of a leaf. Glowingly romantic, but not inclined to vent romance in literary creations, his feelings were the more high-wrought and enthusiastic because they had no outlet in poetic channels. Most boys of great ability and strong passion write versesit is Natures relief to brain and heart at the critical turning age. Most boys thus gifted do so; a few do not, and out of those few Fate selects the great men of action,those large luminous characters that stamp poetry on the worlds prosaic surface. Lionel had in him the pith and substance of Fortunes grand nobodies, who become Fames abrupt somebodies when the chances of life throw suddenly in their way a noble something, to be ardently coveted and boldly won. But I repeat, as yet he was a boy; so he sat there, his hands before his face, an unreasoning self-torturer. He knew now why this haughty Darrell had written with so little tenderness and respect to his beloved mother. Darrell looked on her as the cause of his ignoble kinsmans sale of name; nay, most probably ascribed to her not the fond girlish love which levels all disparities of rank, but the vulgar cold-blooded design to exchange her fathers bank-notes for a marriage beyond her station. And he was the debtor to this supercilious creditor, as his father had been before him. His father! till then he had been so proud of that relationship! Mrs. Haughton had not been happy with her captain; his confirmed habits of wild dissipation had embittered her union, and at last worn away her wifely affections. But she had tended and nursed him in his last illness as the lover of her youth; and though occasionally she hinted at his faults, she ever spoke of him as the ornament of all society,poor, it is true, harassed by unfeeling creditors, but the finest of fine gentlemen. Lionel had never heard from her of the ancestral estates sold for a gambling debt; never from her of the county jail nor the mercenary misalliance. In boyhood, before we have any cause to be proud of ourselves, we are so proud of our fathers, if we have a decent excuse for it. Of his father could Lionel Haughton be proud now? And Darrell was cognizant of his paternal disgrace, had taunted his father in yonder old hallfor what?the marriage from which Lionel sprang! The hands grew tighter and tighter before that burning face. He did not weep, as he had done in Vances presence at a thought much less galling. Not that tears would have misbecome him. Shallow judges of human nature are they who think that tears in themselves ever misbecome boy or even man. Well did the sternest of Roman writers place the arch distinction of humanity aloft from all meaner of Heavens creatures, in the prerogative of tears! Sooner mayst thou trust thy purse to a professional pickpocket than give loyal friendship to the man who boasts of eyes to which the heart never mounts in dew! Only, when man weeps he should be alone,not because tears are weak, but because they should be sacred. Tears are akin to prayers. Pharisees parade prayer! impostors parade tears. O Pegasus, Pegasus,softly, softly,thou hast hurried me off amidst the clouds: drop me gently downthere, by the side of the motionless boy in the shadowy glen.
CHAPTER VII
Lionel Haughton, having hitherto much improved his chance of fortune, decides the question, What will he do with it?
I have been seeking you everywhere, said a well-known voice; and a hand rested lightly on Lionels shoulder. The boy looked up, startled, but yet heavily, and saw Guy Darrell, the last man on earth he could have desired to see. Will you come in for a few minutes? you are wanted.
What for? I would rather stay here. Who can want me?
Darrell, struck by the words and the sullen tone in which they were uttered, surveyed Lionels face for an instant, and replied in a voice involuntarily more kind than usual,
Some one very commonplace, but since the Picts went out of fashion, very necessary to mortals the most sublime. I ought to apologize for his coming. You threatened to leave me yesterday because of a defect in your wardrobe. Mr. Fairthorn wrote to my tailor to hasten hither and repair it. He is here. I commend him to your custom! Dont despise him because he makes for a man of my remote generation. Tailors are keen observers and do not grow out of date so quickly as politicians.