Book: What Will He Do With It, Book 12.

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BOOK XII.


CHAPTER I.

THE MAN OF THE WORLD SHOWS MORE INDIFFERENCE TO THE THINGS AND
DOCTRINES OF THE WORLD THAN MIGHT BE SUPPOSED.--BUT HE VINDICATES
HIS CHARACTER, WHICH MIGHT OTHERWISE BE JEOPARDISED, BY THE
ADROITNESS WITH WHICH, HAVING RESOLVED TO ROAST CHESTNUTS IN THE
ASHES OF ANOTHER MAN'S HEARTH, HE HANDLES THEM WHEN HOTTEST BY THE
PROXY OF A--CAT'S PAW.

In the letter which George told Waife he had received from his uncle,
George had an excuse for the delicate and arduous mission he undertook,
which he did not confide to the old man, lest it should convey more hopes
than its nature justified. In this letter, Alban related, with a degree
of feeling that he rarely manifested, his farewell conversation with
Lionel, who had just departed to join his new regiment. The poor young
man had buoyed himself up with delighted expectations of the result of
Sophy's prolonged residence under Darrell's roof; he had persuaded his
reason that when Darrell had been thus enabled to see and judge of her
for himself, he would be irresistibly attracted towards her; that
Innocence, like Truth, would be mighty and prevail; Darrell was engaged
in the attempt to clear William Losely's name and blood from the taint of
felony;--Alban was commissioned to negotiate with Jasper Losely on any
terms that would remove all chance of future disgrace from that quarter.
Oh yes! to poor Lionel's eyes obstacles vanished--the future became
clear. And thus, when, after telling him of his final interview with the
Minister, Darrell said, "I trust that, in bringing to William Losely this
intelligence, I shall at least soften his disappointment, when I make it
thoroughly clear to him how impossible it is that his Sophy can ever be
more to me--to us--than a stranger whose virtues create an interest in
her welfare"--Lionel was stunned as by a blow. Scarcely could he murmur:

"You have seen her--and your resolve remains the same."

"Can you doubt it?" answered Darrell, as if in surprise. "The resolve
may now give me pain on my account, as before it gave me pain on yours.
But if not moved by your pain, can I be moved by mine? That would be a
baseness." The Colonel, in depicting Lionel's state of mind after the
young soldier had written his farewell to Waife, and previous to quitting
London, expressed very gloomy forebodings. "I do not say," wrote he,
"that Lionel will guiltily seek death in the field, nor does death there
come more to those who seek than to those who shun it; but he will go
upon a service exposed to more than ordinary suffering, privation, and
disease--without that rallying power of hope--that Will, and Desire to
Live, which constitute the true stamina of Youth. And I have always set
a black mark upon those who go into war joyless and despondent. Send a
young fellow to the camp with his spirits broken, his heart heavy as a
lump of lead, and the first of those epidemics, which thin ranks more
than the cannon, says to itself, 'There is a man for me!' Any doctor
will tell you that, even at home, the gay and light-hearted walk safe
through the pestilence, which settles on the moping as malaria settles
on a marsh. Confound Guy Darrell's ancestors, they have spoilt Queen
Victoria as good a young soldier as ever wore a sword by his side! Six
months ago, and how blithely Lionel Haughton looked forth to the future!
--all laurel!--no cypress! And now I feel as if I had shaken hands with
a victim sacrificed by Superstition to the tombs of the dead. I cannot
blame Darrell: I dare say in the same position I might do the same. But
no; on second thoughts, I should not. If Darrell does not choose to
marry and have sons of his own, he has no right to load a poor boy with
benefits, and say: 'There is but one way to prove your gratitude;
remember my ancestors, and be miserable for the rest of your days!'
Darrell, forsooth, intends to leave to Lionel the transmission of the old
Darrell name; and the old Darrell name must not be tarnished by the
marriage on which Lionel has unluckily set his heart! I respect the old
name; but it is not like the House of Vipont--a British Institution. And
if some democratical cholera, which does not care a rush for old names,
carries off Lionel, what becomes of the old name then? Lionel is not
Darrell's son; Lionel need not perforce take the old name. Let the young
man live as Lionel Haughton, and the old name die with Guy Darrell!

"As to the poor girl's birth and parentage, I believe we shall never know
them. I quite agree with Darrell that it will be wisest never to
inquire. But I dismiss, as farfetched and improbable, his supposition
that she is Gabrielle Desmaret's daughter. To me it is infinitely more
likely, either that the deposition of the nurse, which poor Willy gave to
Darrell, and which Darrell showed to me, is true (only that Jasper was
conniving at the temporary suspension of his child's existence while it
suited his purpose)--or that, at the worst, this mysterious young lady is
the daughter of the artiste. In the former supposition, as I have said
over and over again, a marriage between Lionel and Sophy is precisely
that which Darrell should desire; in the latter case, of course, if
Lionel were the head of the House of Vipont, the idea of such an union
would be inadmissible. But Lionel, /entre nous/, is the son of a ruined
spendthrift by a linen-draper's daughter. And Darrell has but to give
the handsome young couple five or six thousand a year, and I know the
world well enough to know that the world will trouble itself very little
about their pedigrees. And really Lionel should be left wholly free to
choose whether he prefer a girl whom he loves with his whole heart, five
or six thousand a year, happiness, and the chance of honours in a
glorious profession to which he will then look with glad spirits--or a
life-long misery, with the right, after Darrell's death--that I hope will
not be these thirty years--to bear the name of Darrell instead of
Haughton; which, if I were the last of the Haughtons, and had any family
pride--as, thank Heaven I have not--would be a painful exchange to me;
and dearly bought by the addition of some additional thousands a year,
when I had grown perhaps as little disposed to spend them as Guy Darrell
himself is. But, after all, there is one I compassionate even more than
young Haughton. My morning rides of late have been much in the direction
of Twickenham, visiting our fair cousin Lady Montfort. I went first to
lecture her for letting these young people see so much of each other.
But my anger melted into admiration and sympathy when I found with what
tender, exquisite, matchless friendship she had been all the while
scheming for Darrell's happiness; and with what remorse she now
contemplated the sorrow which a friendship so grateful, and a belief so
natural, had innocently occasioned. That remorse is wearing her to
death. Dr. F.------, who attended poor dear Willy, is also attending
her; and he told me privately that his skill was in vain--that her case
baffled him; and he had very serious apprehensions. Darrell owes some
consideration to such a friend. And to think that here are lives
permanently embittered, if not risked, by the ruthless obstinacy of the
best-hearted man I ever met! Now, though I have already intimated my
opinions to Darrell with a candour due to the oldest and dearest of my
friends, yet I have never, of course, in the letters I have written to
him or the talk we have had together, spoken out so plainly as I do in
writing to you. And having thus written, without awe of his grey eye and
dark brow, I have half as mind to add 'seize him in a happy moment and
show him this letter.' Yes, I give you full leave; show it to him if you
think it would avail. If not, throw it into the fire, and--pray Heaven
for those whom we poor mortals cannot serve."

On the envelope Alban had added these words: "But of course, before
showing the enclosed, you will prepare Darrell's mind to weigh its
contents." And probably it was in that curt and simple injunction that
the subtle man of the world evinced the astuteness of which not a trace
was apparent in the body of his letter.

Though Alban's communication had much excited his nephew, yet George had
not judged it discreet to avail himself of the permission to show it to
Darrell. It seemed to him that the pride of his host would take much
more offence at its transmission through the hands of a third person than
at the frank tone of its reasonings and suggestions. And George had
determined to re-enclose it to the Colonel, urging him to forward it
himself to Darrell just as it was, with but a brief line to say, "that,
on reflection, Alban submitted direct to his old school-fellow the
reasonings and apprehensions which he had so unreservedly poured forth in
a letter commenced without the intention at which the writer arrived at
the close." But now that the preacher had undertaken the duty of an
advocate, the letter became his brief.

George passed through the library, through the study, up the narrow stair
that finally conducted to the same lofty cell in which Darrell had
confronted the midnight robber who claimed a child in Sophy. With a
nervous hand George knocked at the door.

Unaccustomed to any intrusion on the part of guest or household in that
solitary retreat, somewhat sharply, as if in anger, Darrell's voice
answered the knock.

"Who's there?"

"George Morley."

Darrell opened the door.




CHAPTER II.

"A GOOD ARCHER IS NOT KNOWN BY HIS ARROWS, BUT HIS AIM." "A GOOD
MAN IS NO MORE TO BE FEARED THAN A SHEEP." "A GOOD SURGEON MUST
HAVE AN EAGLE'S EYE, A LION'S HEART, AND A LADY'S HAND." "A GOOD
TONGUE IS A GOOD WEAPON." AND DESPITE THOSE SUGGESTIVE OR
ENCOURAGING PROVERBS, GEORGE MORLEY HAS UNDERTAKEN SOMETHING SO
OPPOSED TO ALL PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY THAT IT BECOMES A GRAVE
QUESTION WHAT HE WILL DO WITH IT.

"I come," said George, "to ask you one of the greatest favours a man can
confer upon another; it will take some little time to explain. Are you
at leisure?"

Darrell's brow relaxed.

"Seat yourself in comfort, my dear George. If it be in my power to serve
or to gratify Alban Morley's nephew, it is I who receive a favour."
Darrell thought to himself--"The young man is ambitious--I may aid in his
path towards a See!"

GEORGE MORLEY.--"First let me say that I would consult your intellect on
a matter which habitually attracts and engages mine--that old vexed
question of the origin and uses of Evil, not only in the physical, but
the moral world; it involves problems over which I would ponder for hours
as a boy--on which I wrote essays as a schoolman--on which I perpetually
collect illustrations to fortify my views as a theologian."

"He is writing a book," thought Darrell, enviously; "and a book on such a
subject will last him all his life. Happy man!"

GEORGE MORLEY.--"The Pastor, you know, is frequently consulted by the
suffering and oppressed; frequently called upon to answer that question
in which the scepticism of the humble and the ignorant ordinarily begins:
'Why am I suffering? Why am I oppressed? Is this the justice of
Providence? Has the Great Father that benign pity, that watchful care
for His children, which you preachers tell us?' Ever intent on deducing
examples from the lives to which the clue has become apparent, must be
the Priest who has to reason with Affliction caused by no apparent fault;
and where, judged by the Canons of Human justice, cloud and darkness
obscure the Divine--still to 'vindicate the ways of God to man.'"

DARRELL.--"A philosophy that preceded, and will outlive, all other
schools. It is twin-born with the world itself. Go on; though the theme
be inexhaustible, its interest never flags."

GEORGE MORLEY.--"Has it struck you, Mr. Darrell, that few lives have ever
passed under your survey; in which the inexpressible tenderness of the
Omniscient has been more visibly clear than in that of your guest,
William Losely?"

DARRELL (surprised).--"Clear? To me, I confess that if ever there were
an instance in which the Divine tenderness, the Divine justice, which I
can never presume to doubt, was yet undiscernible to my bounded vision,
it is in the instance of the very life you refer to. I see a man of
admirable virtues--of a childlike simplicity of character, which makes
him almost unconscious of the grandeur of his own soul--involved by a
sublime self-sacrifice--by a virtue, not by a fault--in the most dreadful
of human calamities--ignominious degradation;--hurled in the midday of
life from the sphere of honest men--a felon's brand on his name--a
vagrant in his age; justice at last, but tardy and niggard, and giving
him but little joy when it arrives; because, ever thinking only of
others, his heart is wrapped in a child whom he cannot make happy in the
way in which his hopes have been set!--George-no, your illustration might
be turned by a sceptic into an argument against you."

GEORGE MORLEY.--"Not unless the sceptic refused the elementary starting-
ground from which you and I may reason; not if it be granted that man has
a soul, which it is the object of this life to enrich and develop for
another. We know from my uncle what William Losely was before this
calamity befel him--a genial boon-companion--a careless, frank, 'good
fellow'--all the virtues you now praise in him dormant, unguessed even by
himself. Suddenly came CALAMITY!--suddenly arose the SOUL! Degradation
of name, and with it dignity of nature! How poor, how slight, how
insignificant William Losely the hanger-on of rural Thanes compared with
that William Waife whose entrance into this house, you--despite that
felon's brand when you knew it was the martyr's glory,--greeted with
noble reverence; whom, when the mind itself was stricken down--only the
soul left to the wreck of the body--you tended with such pious care as he
lay on--your father's bed! And do you, who hold Nobleness in such
honour--do you, of all men, tell me that you cannot recognise that
Celestial tenderness which ennobled a Spirit for all Eternity?"

"George, you are right," cried Darrell; "and I was a blockhead and
blunderer, as man always is when he mistakes a speck in his telescope for
a blotch in the sun of a system."

GEORGE MORLEY.--"But more difficult it is to recognise the mysterious
agencies of Heavenly Love when no great worldly adversity forces us to
pause and question. Let Fortune strike down a victim, and even the
heathen cries, 'This is the hand of God!' But where Fortune brings no
vicissitude; where her wheel runs smooth, dropping wealth or honours as
it rolls--where Affliction centres its work within the secret,
unrevealing heart--there, even the wisest man may not readily perceive by
what means Heaven is admonishing, forcing, or wooing him nearer to
itself. I take the case of a man in whom Heaven acknowledges a favoured
son. I assume his outward life crowned with successes, his mind stored
with opulent gifts, his nature endowed with lofty virtues; what an heir
to train through the brief school of earth for due place in the ages that
roll on for ever! But this man has a parasite weed in each bed of a soul
rich in flowers;--weed and flowers intertwined, stem with stem--their
fibres uniting even deep down to the root.

"Can you not conceive with what untiring vigilant care Heaven will seek to
disentangle the flower from the weed?--how (let me drop inadequate
metaphor)--how Heaven will select for its warning chastisements that very
error which the man has so blent with his virtues that he holds it a
virtue itself?--how, gradually, slowly, pertinaciously, it will gather
this beautiful nature all to itself--insist on a sacrifice it will ask
from no other? To complete the true nature of poor William Losely,
Heaven ordained the sacrifice of worldly repute; to complete the true
nature of Guy Darrell, God ordains him the sacrifice of PRIDE!"

Darrell started-half rose; his eye flashed-his cheek paled; but he
remained silent.

"I have approached the favour I supplicate," resumed George, drawing a
deep breath, as of relief. "Greater favour man can scarcely bestow upon
his fellow. I entreat you to believe that I respect, and love, and
honour you sufficiently to be for a while so lifted up into your
friendship that I may claim the privilege, without which friendship is
but a form;--just as no freedom is more obnoxious than intrusion on
confidence withheld, so no favour, I repeat, more precious than the
confidence which a man of worth vouchsafes to him who invites it with no
claim but the loyalty of his motives."

Said Darrell, softened, but with stateliness: "All human lives are as
separate circles; they may touch at one point in friendly approach, but,
even where they touch, each rounds itself from off the other. With this
hint I am contented to ask at what point in my circle you would touch?"

GEORGE MORLEY.--"I thank you gratefully; I accept your illustration.
The point is touched; I need no other." He paused a moment, as if
concentrating all his thoughts, and then said, with musing accents: "Yes,
I accept your illustration; I will even strengthen the force of the truth
implied in it by a more homely illustration of my own. There are small
skeleton abridgments of history which we give to children. In such a
year a king was crowned--a battle was fought; there was some great
disaster, or some great triumph. Of the true progress and development of
the nation whose record is thus epitomised--of the complicated causes
which lead to these salient events--of the animated, varied multitudinous
life which has been hurrying on from epoch to epoch, the abridgment tells
nothing. It is so with the life of each individual man: the life as it
stands before us is but a sterile epitome--hid from our sight the
EMOTIONS which are the People of the Heart. In such a year occurred a
visible something--a gain--a loss--a success--a disappointment; the
People of the Heart crowned or deposed a King. This is all we know; and
the most voluminous biography ever written must still be a meagre
abridgment of all that really individualised and formed a man. I ask not
your confidence in a single detail or fact in your existence which lies
beyond my sight. Far from me so curious an insolence; but I do ask you
this: Reflecting on your past life as a whole, have not your chief
sorrows had a common idiosyncrasy? Have they not been strangely directed
towards the frustration of some one single object--cherished by your
earliest hopes, and, as if in defiance of fate, resolutely clung to even
now?"

"It is true," muttered Darrell. "You do not offend me; go on!"

"And have not these SORROWS, in frustrating your object, often assumed,
too, a certain uniformity in the weapons they use, in the quarter they
harass or invade, almost as if it were a strategic policy that guided
them where they could most pain, or humble, or eject a FOE that they were
ordered to storm? Degrade you they could not; such was not their
mission. Heaven left you intact a kingliness of nature--a loftiness of
spirit, unabased by assaults levelled not against yourself, but your
pride; your personal dignity, though singularly sensitive, though
bitterly galled, stood proof. What might lower lesser men, lowered not
you; Heaven left you that dignity, for it belongs alike to your intellect
and your virtues--but suffered it to be a source of your anguish. Why?
Because, not content with adorning your virtues, it was covering the
fault against which were directed the sorrows. You frown--forgive me."

"You do not transgress, unless it be as a flatterer! If I frowned, it
was unconsciously--the sign of thought, not anger. Pause!--my mind has
left you for a moment; it is looking into the past."

The past!--Was it not true? That home to whose porch came in time the
Black Horses, in time just to save from the last worst dishonour, but not
save from years racked by each pang that can harrow man's dignity in each
daily assault on the fort of man's pride; the sly treacherous daughter--
her terrible marriage--the man whose disgrace she had linked to her
blood, and whose life was still insult and threat to his own. True, what
a war upon Pride! And even in that secret and fatal love which had been
of all his griefs the most influential and enduring, had his pride been
less bitterly wounded, and that pride less enthroned in his being, would
his grief have been so relentless, his attempts at its conquest so vain?
And then, even now--what was it said, "I can bless?"--holy LOVE! What
was it said, "but not pardon"?--stern PRIDE! And so onto these last
revolutions of sterile life. Was he not miserable in Lionel's and
Sophy's misery? Forlorn in that Citadel of Pride--closed round and
invested with Sorrows--and the last hopes that had fled to the fortress,
slain in defence of its outworks. With hand shading his face, Darrell
remained some minutes silent. At last he raised his head, and his eye
was steadfast, his lip firm.

"George Morley," said he, "I acknowledge much justice in the censure you
have conveyed, with so artful a delicacy that, if it fail to reform, it
cannot displease, and leaves much to be seriously revolved in solitary
self-commune. But though I may own that pride is not made for man, and
that in the blindness of human judgment I may often have confounded pride
with duty, and suffered for the mistake, yet that one prevailing object
of my life, which with so startling a truth you say it has pleased Heaven
to frustrate, I cannot hold an error in itself. You have learned enough
from your uncle, seen enough of me yourself, to know what that object has
been. You are scholar enough to concede to me that it is no ignoble
homage which either nations or persons render to the ancestral Dead--that
homage is an instinct in all but vulgar and sordid natures. Has a man no
ancestry of his own--rightly and justly, if himself of worth, he
appropriates to his lineage all the heroes, and bards, and patriots of
his fatherland! A free citizen has ancestors in all the glorious chiefs
that have adorned the State, on the sole condition that he shall revere
their tombs and guard their memory as a son! And thus, whenever they who
speak trumpet-tongued to grand democracies would rouse some quailing
generation to heroic deed or sacrifice, they appeal in the Name of
Ancestors, and call upon the living to be worthy of the dead! That which
is so laudable--nay, so necessary a sentiment in the mass, cannot be a
fault that angers Heaven in the man. Like all high sentiments, it may
compel harsh and rugged duties; it may need the stern suppression of many
a gentle impulse--of many a pleasing wish. But we must regard it in its
merit and consistency as a whole. And if, my eloquent and subtle friend,
all you have hitherto said be designed but to wind into pleas for the
same cause that I have already decided against the advocate in my own
heart which sides with Lionel's generous love and yon fair girl's
ingenuous and touching grace, let us break up the court; the judge has no
choice but the law which imperiously governs his judgment."

GEORGE MORLEY.--"I have not hitherto presumed to apply to particular
cases the general argument you so indulgently allow me to urge in favour
of my theory, that in the world of the human heart, when closely
examined, there is the same harmony of design as in the external
universe; that in Fault and in Sorrow are the axioms, and problems, and
postulates of a SCIENCE. Bear with me a little longer if I still pursue
the same course of reasoning. I shall not have the arrogance to argue a
special instance--to say, 'This you should do, this you should not do.'
All I would ask is, leave to proffer a few more suggestions to your own
large and candid experience."

Said Darrell, irresistibly allured on, but with a tinge of his grave
irony: "You have the true genius of the pulpit, and I concede to you its
rights. I will listen with the wish to profit--the more susceptible of
conviction because freed from the necessity to reply."

GEORGE MORLEY.--"You vindicate the object which has been the main
ambition of your life. You say 'not an ignoble object.' Truly! ignoble
objects are not for you. The question is, are there not objects nobler,
which should have attained higher value, and led to larger results in the
soul which Providence assigned to you; was not the proper place of the
object you vindicate that of an auxiliary--a subordinate, rather than
that of the all-directing, self-sufficing leader and autocrat of such
various powers of mind? I picture you to myself--a lone, bold-hearted
boy--in this ancient hall, amidst these primitive landscapes, in which
old associations are so little disturbed by the modern--in which the wild
turf of waste lands, vanishing deep into mazes of solemn wood, lends the
scene to dreams of gone days--brings Adventure and Knighthood, and all
the poetical colours of Old, to unite the homage due to the ancestral
dead with the future ambition of life;--Image full of interest and of
pathos--a friendless child of a race more beloved for its decay, looking
dauntless on to poverty and toil, with that conviction of power which is
born of collected purpose and earnest will; and recording his secret vow
that singlehanded he will undo the work of destroying ages, and restore
his line to its place of honour in the land!"

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