What Will He Do with It? — Complete

“The due to the dead, Richara Fairthorn. This nook of fair England, in which I learned from the dead to love honour—this poor domain of Fawley—shall go in bequest to the College at which I was reared.”

“Sir!”

“It will serve for a fellowship or two to honest, bravehearted young scholars. It will be thus, while English institutions may last, devoted to Learning and Honour. It may sustain for mankind some ambition more generous than mine, it appears, ever was—settled thus, not in mine, but my dear father’s name, like the Darrell Museum. These are my dues to the dead, Dick! And the old house thus becomes useless. The new house was ever a folly. They must go down, both, as soon as the young folks are married;—not a stone stand on stone! The ploughshare shall pass over their sites! And this task I order you to see done. I have not strength. You will then hasten to join me at Sorrento, that corner of earth on which Horace wished to breathe his last sigh.

          ‘Ille to mecum locus et beatae           Postulant arces—ibi—tu ‘”

“Don’t, sir, don’t. Horace again! It is too much.” Fairthorn was choking; but as if the idea presented to him was really too monstrous for belief, he clutched at Darrell with so uncertain and vehement a hand that he almost caught him by the throat, and sobbed out, “You must be joking.”

“Seriously and solemnly, Richara Fairthorn,” said Darrell, gently disentangling the fingers that threatened him with strangulation, “seriously and solemnly I have uttered to you my deliberate purpose. I implore you, in the name of our life-long friendship, to face this pain as I do—resolutely, cheerfully. I implore you to execute to the letter the instructions I shall leave with you on quitting England, which I shall do the day Lionel is married; and then, dear old friend, calm days, clear consciences:—In climes where whole races have passed away—proud cities themselves sunk in graves—where our petty grief for a squirearch’s lost house we shall both grow ashamed to indulge—there we will moralise, rail against vain dreams and idle pride, cultivate vines and orange trees, with Horace—nay, nay, Dick—with the FLUTE!”

CHAPTER V

MORE BOUNTEOUS RUN RIVERS WHEN THE ICE THAT LOCKED THEIR FLOW MELTS INTO THEIR WATERS. AND WHEN FINE NATURES RELENT, THEIR KINDNESS Is SWELLED BY THE THAW.

Darrell escaped into the house; Fairthorn sunk upon the ground, and resigned himself for some minutes to unmanly lamentations. Suddenly he started up; a thought came into his brain—a hope into his breast. He made a caper—launched himself into a precipitate zig-zag—gained the hall-door-plunged into his own mysterious hiding-place—and in less than an hour re-emerged, a letter in his hand, with which he had just time to catch the postman, as that functionary was striding off from the back yard with the official bag.

This exploit performed, Fairthorn shambled into his chair at the dinner-table, as George Morley concluded the grace which preceded the meal that in Fairthorn’s estimation usually made the grand event of the passing day. But the poor man’s appetite was gone. As Sophy dined with Waife, the Morleys alone shared, with host and secretary, the melancholy entertainment. George was no less silent than Fairthorn; Darrell’s manner perplexed him. Mrs. Morley, not admitted into her husband’s confidence in secrets that concerned others, though in all his own he was to her conjugal sight pellucidior vitro, was the chief talker; and being the best woman in the world, ever wishing to say something pleasant, she fell to praising the dear old family pictures that scowled at her from the wall, and informed Fairthorn that she had made great progress with her sketch of the old house as seen from the lake, and was in doubt whether she should introduce in the foreground some figures of the olden time, as in Nash’s Views of Baronial Mansions. But not a word could she coax out of Fairthorn; and when she turned to appeal to Darrell, the host suddenly addressed to George a question as to the text and authorities by which the Papal Church defends its doctrine of Purgatory. That entailed a long and, no doubt, erudite reply, which lasted not only through the rest of the dinner, but till Mrs. Motley, edified by the discourse, and delighted to notice the undeviating attention which Darrell paid to her distinguished spouse, took advantage of the first full stop, and retired. Fairthorn finished his bottle of port, and, far from convinced that there was no Purgatory, but inclined to advance the novel heresy that Purgatory sometimes commenced on this side the grave—slinked away, and was seen no more that night; neither was his flute heard.

Then Darrell rose and said: “I shall go up-stairs to our sick friend for a few minutes; may I find you here when I come back? Your visit to him can follow mine.”

On entering Waife’s room, Darrell went straight forward towards Sophy, and cut off her retreat.

“Fair guest,” said he, with a grace and tenderness of manner which, when he pleased it, could be ineffably bewitching—“teach me some art by which in future rather to detain than to scare away the presence in which a duller age than mine could still recognise the charms that subdue the young.” He led her back gently to the seat she had deserted—placed himself next to her—addressed a few cordial queries to Waife about his health and comforts—and then said: “You must not leave me for some days yet. I have written by this post to my kinsman, Lionel Haughton. I have refused to be his ambassador at a court in which, by all the laws of nations, he is bound to submit himself to his conqueror. I cannot even hope that he may escape with his freedom. No! chains for life! Thrice happy, indeed, if that be the merciful sentence you inflict.”

He raised Sophy’s hand to his lips as he ended, and before she could even quite comprehend the meaning of his words—so was she startled, confused, incredulous of such sudden change in fate—the door had closed on Darrell, and Waife had clasped her to his breast, murmuring, “Is not Providence kind?”

Darrell rejoined the scholar. “George,” said he, “be kind enough to tell Alban that you showed me his letter. Be kind enough also to write to Lady Montfort, and say that I gratefully acknowledge her wish to repair to me those losses which have left me to face age and the grave alone. Tell her that her old friend (you remember, George, I knew her as a child) sees in that wish the same sweet goodness of heart which soothed him when his son died and his daughter fled. Add that her wish is gratified. To that marriage in which she compassionately foresaw the best solace left to my bereaved and baffled existence—to that marriage I give my consent.”

“You do! Oh, Mr. Darrell, how I honour you!”

“Nay, I no more deserve honour for consenting than I should have deserved contempt if I had continued to refuse. To do what I deemed right is not more my wish now than it was twelve hours ago. To what so sudden a change of resolve, in one who changes resolves very rarely, may be due, whether to Lady Montfort, to Alban, or to that metaphysical skill with which you wound into my reason, and compelled me to review all its judgments, I do not attempt to determine; yet I thought I had no option but the course I had taken. No; it is fair to yourself to give you the chief credit; you made me desire, you made me resolve, to find an option—I have found one. And now pay your visit where mine has been just paid. It will be three days, I suppose, before Lionel, having joined his new regiment at * * *, can be here. And then it will be weeks yet, I believe, before his regiment sails; and I’m all for short courtships.”

CHAPTER VI

FAIRTHORN FRIGHTENS SOPHY. SIR ISAAC IS INVITED BY DARRELL, AND FORMS ONE OF A FAMILY CIRCLE.

Such a sweet voice in singing breaks out from yon leafless beeches! Waife hears it at noon from his window. Hark! Sophy has found song once more.

She is seated on a garden bench, looking across the lake towards the gloomy old Manor-house and the tall spectre palace beside it. Mrs. Morley is also on the bench, hard at work on her sketch; Fairthorn prowls through the thickets behind, wandering restless, and wretched, and wrathful beyond all words to describe. He hears that voice Singing; he stops short, perfectly rabid with indignation. “Singing,” he muttered, “singing in triumph, and glowering at the very House she dooms to destruction. Worse than Nero striking his lyre amidst the conflagration of Rome!” By-and-by Sophy, who somehow or other cannot sit long in any place, and tires that day of any companion, wanders away from the lake and comes right upon Fairthorn. Hailing, in her unutterable secret bliss, the musician who had so often joined her rambles in the days of unuttered secret sadness, she sprang towards him, with welcome and mirth in a face that would have lured Diogenes out of his tub. Fairthorn recoiled sidelong, growling forth, “Don’t—you had better not!”—grinned the most savage grin, showing all his teeth like a wolf; and as she stood, mute with wonder, perhaps with fright, he slunk edgeways off, as if aware of his own murderous inclinations, turning his head more than once, and shaking it at her; then, with the wonted mystery which enveloped his exits, he was gone! vanished behind a crag, or amidst a bush, or into a hole—Heaven knows; but, like the lady in the Siege of Corinth, who warned the renegade Alp of his approaching end, he was “gone.”

Twice again that day Sophy encountered the enraged musician; each time the same menacing aspect and weird disappearance.

“Is Mr. Fairthorn ever a little-odd?” asked Sophy timidly of George Morley.

“Always,” answered George, dryly.

Sophy felt relieved at that reply. Whatever is habitual in a man’s manner, however unpleasant, is seldom formidable. Still Sophy could not help saying: “I wish poor Sir Isaac were here!”

“Do you?” said a soft voice behind her; “and pray, who is Sir Isaac?”

The speaker was Darrell, who had come forth with the resolute intent to see more of Sophy, and make himself as amiably social as he could. Guy Darrell could never be kind by halves.

“Sir Isaac is the wonderful dog you have heard me describe,” replied George.

“Would he hurt my doe if he came here?” asked Darrell.

“Oh, no!” cried Sophy; “he never hurts anything. He once found a wounded hare, and he brought it in his mouth to us so tenderly, and seemed so anxious that we should cure it, which grandfather did, and the hare would sometimes hurt him, but he never hurt the hare.”

Said George sonorously:

       “Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes         Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros.”

Darrell drew Sophy’s arm into his own. “Will you walk back to the lake with me,” said he, “and help me to feed the swans? George, send your servant express for Sir Isaac. I am impatient to make his acquaintance.”

Sophy’s hand involuntarily pressed Darrell’s arm. She looked up into his face with innocent, joyous gratitude; feeling at once, and as by magic, that her awe of him was gone.

Darrell and Sophy rambled thus together for more than an hour. He sought to draw out her mind, unaware to herself; he succeeded. He was struck with a certain simple poetry of thought which pervaded her ideas—not artificial sentimentality, but a natural tendency to detect in all life a something of delicate or beautiful which lies hid from the ordinary sense. He found, thanks to Lady Montfort, that, though far from learned, she was more acquainted with literature than he had supposed. And sometimes he changed colour, or breathed his short quick sigh, when he recognised her familiarity with passages in his favourite authors which he himself had commended, or read aloud, to the Caroline of old.

The next day Waife, who seemed now recovered as by enchantment, walked forth with George, Darrell again with Sophy. Sir Isaac arrived—Immense joy; the doe butts Sir Isaac, who retreating, stands on his hind legs, and, having possessed himself of Waife’s crutch, presents fire; the doe in her turn retreats;—half an hour afterwards doe and dog are friends.

Waife is induced, without much persuasion, to join the rest of the party at dinner. In the evening, all (Fairthorn excepted) draw round the fire. Waife is entreated by George to read a scene or two out of Shakespeare. He selects the latter portion of “King Lear.” Darrell, who never was a playgoer, and who, to his shame be it said, had looked very little into Shakespeare since he left college, was wonderstruck. He himself read beautifully—all great orators, I suppose, do; but his talent was not mimetic—not imitative; he could never have been an actor—never thrown himself into existences wholly alien or repugnant to his own. Grave or gay, stern or kind, Guy Darrell, though often varying, was always Guy Darrell.

But when Waife was once in that magical world of art, Waife was gone—nothing left of him;—the part lived as if there were no actor to it;—it was the Fool—it was Lear.

For the first time Darrell felt what a grand creature a grand actor really is—what a luminous, unconscious critic bringing out beauties of which no commentator ever dreamed! When the reading was over, talk still flowed; the gloomy old hearth knew the charm of a home circle. All started incredulous when the clock struck one. Just as Sophy was passing to the door, out from behind the window curtain glared a vindictive, spiteful eye. Fairthorn made a move at her, which ‘tis a pity Waife did not see—it would have been a study for Caliban. She uttered a little scream.

“What’s the matter?” cried the host.

“Nothing,” said she quickly—far too generous to betray the hostile oddities of the musician. “Sir Isaac was in my way—that was all.”

“Another evening we must have Fairthorn’s flute,” said Darrell. “What a pity he was not here to-night!—he would have enjoyed such reading—no one more.”

Said Mrs. Morley, “He was here once or twice during the evening; but he vanished!”

“Vanishing seems his forte,” said George.

Darrell looked annoyed. It was his peculiarity to resent any jest, however slight, against an absent friend; and at that moment his heart was perhaps more warmed towards Dick Fairthorn than to any man living. If he had not determined to be as amiable and mild towards his guests as his nature would permit, probably George might have had the flip of a sarcasm which would have tingled for a month. But as it was, Darrell contented himself with saying gravely:

“No, George; Fairthorn’s foible is vanishing; his forte is fidelity. If my fortune were to vanish, Fairthorn would never disappear; and that’s more than I would say if I were a King, and Fairthorn—a Bishop!”

After that extraordinary figure of speech, “Good-nights” were somewhat hastily exchanged; and Fairthorn was left; behind the curtain with feelings towards all his master’s guests as little, it is to be hoped, like those of a Christian Bishop towards his fellow-creatures, as they possibly could be.

CHAPTER VII

             “Domus et placens Uxor.”

FAIRTHORN FINDS NOTHING PLACENS IN THE UXOR, TO WHOM DOMUS IS INDEBTED FOR ITS DESTRUCTION.

Another day! Lionel is expected to arrive an hour or two after noon. Darrell is in his room—his will once more before him. He has drawn up a rough copy of the codicil by which Fawley is to pass away, and the name of Darrell be consigned to the care of grateful Learning, linked with prizes and fellowships;—a public property—lost for ever to private representatives of its sepulchred bearers. Preparations for departure from the doomed dwelling-house have begun. There are large boxes on the floor; and favourite volumes—chiefly in science or classics—lie piled beside them for selection.

What is really at the bottom of Guy Darrell’s heart? Does he feel reconciled to his decision? Is the virtue of his new self-sacrifice in itself a consoling reward? Is that cordial urbanity, that cheerful kindness, by which he has been yet more endearing himself to his guests, sincere or assumed? As he throws aside his pen, and leans his cheek on his hand, the expression of his countenance may perhaps best answer those questions. It has more unmingled melancholy than was habitual to it before, even when in his gloomiest moods; but it is a melancholy much more soft and subdued; it is the melancholy of resignation—that of a man who has ceased a long struggle—paid his offering to the appeased Nemesis, in casting into the sea the thing that had been to him the dearest.

But in resignation, when complete, there is always a strange relief. Despite that melancholy, Darrell is less unhappy than he has been for years. He feels as if a suspense has passed—a load been lifted from his breast. After all, he has secured, to the best of his judgment, the happiness of the living, and, in relinquishing the object to which his own life has been vainly devoted, and immolating the pride attached to it, he has yet, to use his own words, paid his “dues to the dead.” No descendant from a Jasper Losely and a Gabrielle Desmarets will sit as mistress of the house in which Loyalty and Honour had garnered, with the wrecks of fortune, the memories of knightly fame—nor perpetuate the name of Darrell through children whose blood has a source in the sink of infamy and fraud. Nor was this consolation that of a culpable pride; it was bought by the abdication of a pride that had opposed its prejudices to living worth—to living happiness. Sophy would not be punished for sins not her own—Lionel not barred from a prize that earth never might replace. What mattered to them a mouldering, old, desolate manor-house—a few hundreds of pitiful acres? Their children would not be less blooming if their holiday summer-noons were not shaded by those darksome trees—nor less lively of wit if their school themes were signed in the name, not of Darrell, but Haughton.

A slight nervous knock at the door. Darrell has summoned Fairthorn; Fairthorn enters. Darrell takes up a paper; it contains minute instructions as to the demolition of the two buildings. The materials of the new pile may be disposed of, sold, carted away—anyhow, anywhere. Those of the old house are sacred—not a brick to be carried from the precincts around it. No; from foundation to roof, all to be piously removed—to receive formal interment deep in the still bosom of the little lake, and the lake to be filled up and turfed over. The pictures and antiquities selected for the Darrell Museum are, of course, to be carefully transported to London—warehoused safely till the gift from owner to nation be legally ratified. The pictures and articles of less value will be sent to an auction. But when it came to the old family portraits in the Manorhouse, the old homely furniture, familiarised to sight and use and love from infancy, Darrell was at a loss; his invention failed. That question was reserved for further consideration.

“And why,” says Fairthorn, bluntly and coarsely, urging at least reprieve; “why, if it must be, not wait till you are no more? Why must the old house be buried before you are?”

“Because,” answered Darrell, “such an order, left by will, would seem a reproach to my heirs; it would wound Lionel to the quick. Done in my lifetime, and just after I have given my blessing on his marriage, I can suggest a thousand reasons for an old man’s whim; and my manner alone will dispel all idea of a covert affront to his charming innocent bride.”

“I wish she were hanged, with all my heart,” muttered Fairthorn, “coming here to do such astonishing mischief! But, sir, I can’t obey you; ‘tis no use talking. You must get some one else. Parson Morley will do it—with pleasure too, no doubt; or that hobbling old man whom I suspect to be a conjurer. Who knows but what he may get knocked on the head as he is looking on with his wicked one eye; and then there will be an end of him, too, which would be a great satisfaction!”

“Pshaw, my dear Dick; there is no one else I can ask but you. The Parson would argue; I’ve had enough of his arguings; and the old man is the last whom my own arguings could deceive. Fiat justitia.”

“Don’t, sir, don’t; you are breaking my heart—‘tis a shame, sir,” sobbed the poor faithful rebel.

“Well, Dick, then I must see it done myself; and you shall go on first to Sorrento, and hire some villa to suit us. I don’t see why Lionel should not be married next week; then the house will be clear. And—yes—it was cowardly in me to shrink. Mine be the task. Shame on me to yield it to another. Go back to thy flute, Dick.

            ‘Neque tibias              Euterpe cohibet, nec Polyhymnia              Lesboum refugit tendere barbiton!’”

At that last remorseless shaft from the Horatian quiver, “Venenatis gravida sagittis,” Fairthorn could stand ground no longer; there was a shamble—a plunge—and once more the man was vanished.

CHAPTER VIII

THE FLUTE-PLAYER SHOWS HOW LITTLE MUSIC HATH POWER TO SOOTHE THE SAVAGE BREAST—OF A MUSICIAN.

Fairthorn found himself on the very spot in which, more than five years ago, Lionel, stung by Fairthorn’s own incontinent prickles, had been discovered by Darrell. There he threw himself on the ground, as the boy had done; there, like the boy, he brooded moodily, bitterly—sore with the world and himself. To that letter, written on the day that Darrell had so shocked him, and on which letter he had counted as a last forlorn—hope, no answer had been given. In an hour or so, Lionel would arrive; those hateful nuptials, dooming Fawley as the nuptials of Paris and Helen had doomed Troy, would be finally arranged. In another week the work of demolition would commence. He never meant to leave Darrell to superintend that work. No; grumble and refuse as he might till the last moment, he knew well enough that, when it came to the point, he, Richard Fairthorn, must endure any torture that could save Guy Darrell from a pang. A voice comes singing low through the grove—the patter of feet on the crisp leaves. He looks up; Sir Isaac is scrutinising him gravely—behind Sir Isaac, Darrell’s own doe, led patiently by Sophy, yes, lending its faithless neck to that female criminal’s destroying hand. He could not bear that sight, which added insult to injury. He scrambled up—darted a kick at Sir Isaac—snatched the doe from the girl’s hand, and looked her in the face (her—not Sophy, but the doe) with a reproach that, if the brute had not been lost to all sense of shame, would have cut her to the heart; then, turning to Sophy, he said: “No, Miss! I reared this creature—fed it with my own hands, Miss. I gave it up to Guy Darrell, Miss; and you shan’t steal this from him, whatever else you may do, Miss.”

SOPHY.—“Indeed, Mr. Fairthorn, it was for Mr. Darrell’s sake that I wished to make friends with the doe—as you would with poor Sir Isaac, if you would but try and like me—a little, only a very little, Mr. Fairthorn.”

FAIRTHORN.—“Don’t!”

SOPHY.—“Don’t what? I am so sorry to see I have annoyed you somehow. You have not been the same person to me the last two or three days. Tell me what I have done wrong; scold me, but make it up.”

FAIRTHORN.—“Don’t holdout your hand to me! Don’t be smiling in my face! I don’t choose it! Get out of my sight! You are standing between me and the old house—robbing me even of my last looks at the home which you—”

SOPHY.—“Which I—what?”

FAIRTHORN.—“Don’t, I say, don’t—don’t tempt me. You had better not ask questions—that’s all. I shall tell you the truth; I know I shall; my tongue is itching to tell it. Please to walk on.”

Despite the grotesque manner and astounding rudeness of the flute-player, his distress of mind was so evident—there was something so genuine and earnest at the bottom of his ludicrous anger—that Sopby began to feel a vague presentiment of evil. That she was the mysterious cause of some great suffering to this strange enemy, whom she had unconsciously provoked, was clear; and she said, therefore, with more gravity than she had before evinced: