What Will He Do With It? (Belford)/Book 2/Chapter 13

by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

CHAPTER XIII.

He who sees his heir in his own child, carries his eye over hopes and possessions lying far beyond his grave-stone; viewing his life, even here, as a period but closed with a comma. He who sees his heir in another man's child, sees the full stop at the end of the sentence.

Lionel's departure was indefinitely postponed; nothing more was said of it. Meanwhile Darrell's manner toward him underwent a marked change. The previous indifference the rich kinsman had hitherto shown as to the boy's past life, and the peculiarities of his intellect and character, wholly vanished. He sought now, on the contrary, to plumb thoroughly the more hid hidden depths which lurk in the nature of every human being, and which, in Lionel, were the more difficult to discern from the vivacity and candour which covered with so smooth and charming a surface a pride tremulously sensitive, and an ambition that startled himself in the hours when solitude and revery reflect upon the visions of youth the giant outline of its own hopes.

Darrell was not dissatisfied with the results of his survey; yet often, when perhaps most pleased, a shade would pass over his countenance; and had a woman who loved him been by to listen, she would have heard the short slight sigh which came and went too quickly for the duller sense of man's friendship to recognize it as the sound of sorrow.

In Darrell himself, thus insensibly altered, Lionel daily discovered more to charm his interest and deepen his affection. In this man's nature there were, indeed, such wondrous under-currents of sweetness, so suddenly gushing forth, so suddenly vanishing again! And exquisite in him were the traits of that sympathetic tact which the world calls fine breeding, but which comes only from a heart at once chivalrous and tender, the more bewitching in Darrell from their contrast with a manner usually cold, and a bearing so stamped with masculine, self-willed, haughty power. Thus—days went on as if Lionel had become a very child of the house. But his sojourn was in truth drawing near to a close not less abrupt and unexpected than the turn in his host's humours to which he owed the delay of his departure.

One bright afternoon, as Darrell was standing at the window of his private study, Fairthorn, who had crept in on some matter of business, looked at his countenance long and wistfully, and then, shambling up to his side, put one hand on his shoulder with a light timid touch, and, pointing with the other to Lionel, who was lying on the grass in front of the casement reading the "Faerie Queene," said, "Why do you take him to your heart if he does not comfort it?"

Darrell winced and answered gently, "I did not know you were in the room. Poor Fairthorn; thank you!"

"Thank me!—what for?"

"For a kind thought. So, then, you like the boy?"

"Mayn't I like him?" asked Fairthorn, looking rather frightened; "surely you do!"

"Yes, I like him much; I am trying my best to love him. But, but"—Darrell turned quickly, and the portrait of his father over the mantelpiece came full upon his sight,—an impressive, a haunting face,—sweet and gentle, yet with the high narrow brow and arched nostril of pride, with restless melancholy eyes, and an expression that revealed the delicacy of intellect, but not its power. There was something forlorn, but imposing, in the whole effigy. As you continued to look at the countenance, the mournful attraction grew upon you. Truly a touching and a most lovable aspect. Darrell's eyes moistened.

"Yes, my father, it is so!" he said softly. "All my sacrifices were in vain. The race is not to be rebuilt! No grandchild of yours will succeed me,—me, the last of the old line! Fairthorn, how can I love that boy? He may be my heir, and in his veins not a drop of my father's blood!"

"But he has the blood of your father's ancestors; and why must you think of him as your heir?—you, who, if you would but go again into the world, might yet find a fair wi—"

With such a stamp came Darrell's foot upon the floor that the holy and conjugal monosyllable dropping from Fairthorn's lips was as much cut in two as if a shark had snapped it. Unspeakably frightened, the poor man sidled away, thrust himself behind a tall reading-desk, and, peering aslant from that covert, whimpered out, "Don't, don't now, don't be so awful; I did not mean to offend, but I'm always saying something I did not mean; and really you look so young still" (coaxingly), "and, and—"

Darrell, the burst of rage over, had sunk upon a chair, his face bowed over his hands, and his breast heaving as if with suppressed sobs.

The musician forgot his fear; he sprang forward, almost upsetting the tall desk; he flung himself on his knees at Darrell's feet, and exclaimed in broken words, "Master, master, forgive me! Beast that I was! Do look up—do smile or else beat me—kick me."

Darrell's right hand slid gently from his face, and fell into Fairthorn's clasp.

"Hush, hush," muttered the man of granite; "one moment, and it will be over."

One moment! That might be but a figure of speech; yet before Lionel had finished half the canto that was plunging him into fairyland, Darrell was standing by him with his ordinary tranquil mien; and Fairthorn's flute from behind the boughs of a neighbouring lime-tree was breathing out an air as dulcet as if careless Fauns still piped in Arcady, and Grief were a far dweller on the other side of the mountains, of whom shepherds, reclining under summer leaves, speak as we speak of hydras and unicorns, and things in fable.

On, on swelled the mellow, mellow, witching music; and now the worn man with his secret sorrow, and the boy with his frank, glad laugh, are passing away, side by side, over the turf, with its starry and golden wild-flowers, under the boughs in yon Druid copse, from which they start the ringdove—farther and farther, still side by side, now out of sight, as if the dense green of the summer had closed around them like waves. But still the flute sounds on, and still they hear it, softer and softer, as they go. Hark! do you not hear it—you?