"I resign you to Lionel's charge now," said the Colonel, glancing at his watch. "I have an engagementtrouble some. Two silly friends of mine have been quarrellinghigh wordsin an age when duels are out of the question. I have promised to meet another man, and draw up the form for a mutual apology. High words are so stupid nowadays. No option but to swallow them up again if they were as high as steeples. Adieu for the present. We meet to-night at Lady Dulcett's concert?"
"Yes," said Darrell. "I promised Miss Vyvyan to be there, and keep her from disturbing the congregation. You Lionel, will come with me."
LIONELL (embarrassed)."No; you must excuse me. I have long been engaged elsewhere."
"That's a pity," said the Colonel, gravely. "Lady Dulcett's conceit is just one of the places where a young man should be seen." Colonel Morley waved his hand with his usual languid elegance, and his hack cantered off with him, stately as a charger, easy as a rocking-horse.
"Unalterable man," said Darrell, as his eye followed the horseman's receding figure. "'Through all the mutations on Time's dusty high-road- stable as a milestone. Just what Alban Morley was as a school-boy he is now; and if mortal span were extended to the age of the patriarchs, just what Alban Morley is now, Alban Morley would be a thousand years hence. I don't mean externally, of course; wrinkles will comecheeks will fade. But these are trifles: man's body is a garment, as Socrates said before me, and every seven years, according to the physiologists, man has a new suit, fibre and cuticle, from top to toe. The interior being that wears the clothes is the same in Alban Morley. Has he loved, hated, rejoiced, suffered? Where is the sign? Not one. At school, as in life, doing nothing, but decidedly somebodyrespected by small boys, petted by big boysan authority with all. Never getting honoursarm and arm with those who did; never in scrapesadvising those who were; imperturbable, immovable, calm above mortal cares as an Epicurean deity. What can wealth give that he has not got? In the houses of the richest he chooses his room. Talk of ambition, talk of powerhe has their rewards without an effort. True prime minister of all the realm he cares for; good society has not a vote against himhe transacts its affairs, he knows its secretshe yields its patronage. Ever requested to do a favourno loan great enough to do him one. Incorruptible, yet versed to a fraction in each man's price; impeccable, yet confidant in each man's foibles; smooth as silk, hard as adamant; impossible to wound, vex, annoy himbut not insensible; thoroughly kind. Dear, dear Alban! nature never polished a finer gentleman out of a solider block of man!" Darrell's voice quivered a little as he completed in earnest affection the sketch begun in playful irony, and then with a sudden change of thought, he resumed lightly:
"But I wish you to do me a favour, Lionel. Aid me to repair a fault in good breeding, of which Alban Morley would never have been guilty. I have been several days in London, and not yet called on your mother. Will you accompany me now to her house and present me?"
"Thank you, thank you; you will make her so proud and happy; but may I ride on and prepare her for your visit?"
"Certainly; her address is"
"Gloucester Place, No.."
"I will meet you there in half an hour."
CHAPTER II
"Let observation, with expansive view,
Survey mankind from China to Peru,"
AND OBSERVATION WILL EVERYWHERE FIND, INDISPENSABLE TO THE HAPPINESS OF WOMAN, A VISITING ACQUAINTANCE.
Lionel knew that Mrs. Haughton would that day need more than usual forewarning of a visit from Mr. Darrell. For the evening of that day Mrs. Haughton proposed "to give a party." When Mrs. Haughton gave a party, it was a serious affair. A notable and bustling housewife, she attended herself to each preparatory detail. It was to assist at this party that Lionel had resigned Lady Dulcett's concert. The young man, reluctantly acquiescing in the arrangements by which Alban Morley had engaged him a lodging of his own, seldom or never let a day pass without gratifying his mother's proud heart by an hour or two spent in Gloucester Place, often to the forfeiture of a pleasant ride, or other tempting excursion, with gay comrades. Difficult in London life, and at the full of its season, to devote an hour or two to visits, apart from the track chalked out by one's very mode of existencedifficult to cut off an hour so as not to cut up a day. And Mrs. Haughton was exacting-nice in her choice as to the exact slice in the day. She took the prime of the joint. She liked her neighbours to see the handsome, elegant young man dismount from his charger or descend from his cabriolet, just at the witching hour when Gloucester Place was fullest. Did he go to a levee, he must be sure to come to her before he changed his dress, that she and Gloucester Place might admire him in uniform. Was he going to dine at some very great house, he must take her in his way (though no street could be more out of his way), that she might be enabled to say in the parties to which she herself repaired "There is a great dinner at Lord So-and-so's to-day; my son called on me before he went there. If he had been disengaged, I should have asked permission to bring him here."
Not that Mrs. Haughton honestly designed, nor even wished to draw the young man from the dazzling vortex of high life into her own little currents of dissipation. She was much too proud of Lionel to think that her friends were grand enough for him to honour their houses by his presence. She had in this, too, a lively recollection of her lost Captain's doctrinal views of the great world's creed. The Captain had flourished in the time when Impertinence, installed by Brummell, though her influence was waning, still schooled her oligarchs, and maintained the etiquette of her court; and even when his /misalliance/ and his debts had cast him out of his native sphere, he lost not all the original brightness of an exclusive. In moments of connubial confidence, when owning his past errors, and tracing to his sympathising Jessie the causes of his decline, he would say: "'Tis not a man's birth, nor his fortune, that gives him his place in societyit depends on his conduct, Jessie. He must not be seen bowing to snobs, nor should his enemies track him to the haunts of vulgarians. I date my fall in life to dining with a horrid man who lent me L100, and lived in Upper Baker Street. His wife took my arm from a place they called a drawing-room (the Captain as he spoke was on a fourth floor), to share some unknown food which they called a dinner (the Captain at that moment would have welcomed a rasher). The woman went about blabbingthe thing got windfor the first time my character received a soil. What is a man without character! and character once sullied, Jessie, man becomes reckless. Teach my boy to beware of the first false stepno association with parvenus. Don't cry, Jessie I don't mean that he is to cut yourrelations are quite different from other peoplenothing so low as cutting relations. I continued, for instance, to visit Guy Darrell, though he lived at the back of Holborn, and I actually saw him once in brown beaver gloves. But he was a relation. I have even dined at his house, and met odd people there people who lived also at the back of Holborn. But he did not ask me to go to their houses, and if he had, I must have cut him." By reminiscences of this kind of talk, Lionel was saved from any design of Mrs. Haughton's to attract his orbit into the circle within which she herself moved. He must come to the parties she gaveillumine or awe odd people there. That was a proper tribute to maternal pride. But had they asked him to their parties, she would have been the first to resent such a liberty.
Lionel found Mrs. Haughton in great bustle. A gardener's cart was before the street door. Men were bringing in a grove of evergreens, intended to border the staircase, and make its exiguous ascent still more difficult. The refreshments were already laid out in the dining-room. Mrs. Haughton, with scissors in hand, was cutting flowers to fill the eperyne, but darting to and fro, like a dragonfly, from the dining-room to the hall, from the flowers to the evergreens.
"Dear me, Lionel, is that you? Just tell me, you who go to all those grandees, whether the ratafia-cakes should be opposite to the spauge- cakes, or whether they would not go betterthusat cross-corners?"
"My dear mother, I never observedI don't know. But make haste-take off that apron-have those doors shut come upstairs. Mr. Darrell will be here very shortly. I have ridden on to prepare you."
"Mr. DarrellTO-DAYHOW could you let him come? Oh, Lionel, how thoughtless you are! You should have some respect for your motherI am your mother, sir."
"Yes, my own dear motherdon't scoldI could not help it. He is so engaged, so sought after; if I had put him off to-day, he might never have come, and"
"Never have come! Who is Mr. Darrell, to give himself such airs?Only a lawyer after all," said Mrs. Haughton, with majesty.
"Oh, mother, that speech is not like you. He is our benefactorour"
"Don't, don't say very moreI was very wrongquite wickedonly my temper, Lionel dear. Good Mr. Darrell! I shall be so happy to see him see him, too, in this house that I owe to himsee him by your side! I think I shall fall down on my knees to him."
And her eyes began to stream.
Lionel kissed the tears away fondly. "That's my own mother now indeed now I am proud of you, mother; and how well you look! I am proud of that too."
"Look wellI am not fit to be seen, this figurethough perhaps an elderly quiet gentleman like good Mr. Darrell does not notice ladies much. John, John, makes haste with those plants. Gracious me! you've got your coat off!put it onI expect a gentlemanI'm at home, in the front drawing-roomnothat's all set outthe back drawing-room, John. Send Susan to me. Lionel, do just look at the supper-table; and what is to be done with the flowers, and"
The rest of Mrs. Haughton's voice, owing to the rapidity of her ascent, which affected the distinctness of her utterance, was lost in air. She vanished at culminating pointwithin her chamber.
CHAPTER III
MRS. HAUGHTON AT HOME TO GUY DARRELL.
Thanks to Lionel's activity, the hall was disencumberedthe plants hastily stowed away-the parlour closed on the festive preparationsand the footman in his livery waiting at the doorwhen Mr. Darrell arrived. Lionel himself came out and welcomed his benefactor's footstep across the threshold of the home which the generous man had provided for the widow.