Part 20 (1/2)
”I--nothing; but I spoke of the living! I am dead. Only,” added Darrell, with his silvery laugh, ”I say, as poor Chesterfield said before me, 'It is a secret: keep it.'”
Lionel made no reply; the melancholy of the words saddened him: but Darrell's manner repelled the expression of sympathy or of interest; and the boy fell into conjecture, what had killed to the world this man's intellectual life?
And thus silently they continued to wander on till the sound of the flute had long been lost to their ears. Was the musician playing still?
At length they came round to the other end of Fawley village, and Darrell again became animated.
”Perhaps,” said he, returning to the subject of talk that had been abruptly suspended,--”perhaps the love of power is at the origin of each restless courts.h.i.+p of Fortune: yet, after all, who has power with less alloy than the village thane? With so little effort, so little thought, the man in the manor-house can make men in the cottage happier here below and more fit for a hereafter yonder. In leaving the world I come from contest and pilgrimage, like our sires the Crusaders, to reign at home.”
As he spoke, he entered one of the cottages. An old paralytic man was seated by the fire, hot though the July sun was out of doors; and his wife, of the same age, and almost as helpless, was reading to him a chapter in the Old Testament,--the fifth chapter in Genesis, containing the genealogy, age, and death of the patriarchs before the Flood. How the faces of the couple brightened when Darrell entered. ”Master Guy!”
said the old man, tremulously rising. The world-weary orator and lawyer was still Master Guy to him.
”Sit down, Matthew, and let, me read you a chapter.” Darrell took the Holy Book, and read the Sermon on the Mount. Never had Lionel heard anything like that reading; the feeling which brought out the depth of the sense, the tones, sweeter than the flute, which clothed the divine words in music. As Darrell ceased, some beauty seemed gone from the day. He lingered a few minutes, talking kindly and familiarly, and then turned into another cottage, where lay a sick woman. He listened to her ailments, promised to send her something to do her good from his own stores, cheered up her spirits, and, leaving her happy, turned to Lionel with a glorious smile, that seemed to ask, ”And is there not power in this?”
Put it was the sad peculiarity of this remarkable man that all his moods were subject to rapid and seemingly unaccountable variations. It was as if some great blow had fallen on the mainspring of his organization, and left its original harmony broken up into fragments each impressive in itself, but running one into the other with an abrupt discord, as a harp played upon by the winds. For, after this evident effort at self-consolation or self-support in soothing or strengthening others, suddenly Darrell's head fell again upon his breast, and he walked on, up the village lane, heeding no longer either the open doors of expectant cottagers or the salutation of humble pa.s.sers-by. ”And I could have been so happy here!” he said suddenly. ”Can I not be so yet? Ay, perhaps, when I am thoroughly old,--tied to the world but by the thread of an hour. Old men do seem happy; behind them, all memories faint, save those of childhood and sprightly youth; before them, the narrow ford, and the sun dawning up through the clouds on the other sh.o.r.e. 'T is the critical descent into age in which man is surely most troubled; griefs gone, still rankling; nor-strength yet in his limbs, pa.s.sion yet in his heart-reconciled to what loom nearest in the prospect,--the armchair and the palsied head. Well! life is a quaint puzzle. Bits the most incongruous join into each other, and the scheme thus gradually becomes symmetrical and clear; when, lo! as the infant claps his hands and cries, 'See! see! the puzzle is made out!' all the pieces are swept back into the box,--black box with the gilded nails. Ho! Lionel, look up; there is our village church, and here, close at my right, the churchyard!”
Now while Darrell and his young companion were directing their gaze to the right of the village lane, towards the small gray church,--towards the sacred burial-ground in which, here and there amongst humbler graves, stood the monumental stone inscribed to the memory of some former Darrell, for whose remains the living sod had been preferred to the family vault; while both slowly neared the funeral spot, and leaned, silent and musing, over the rail that fenced it from the animals turned to graze on the sward of the surrounding green,--a foot-traveller, a stranger in the place, loitered on the threshold of the small wayside inn, about fifty yards off to the left of the lane, and looked hard at the still figures of the two kinsmen.
Turning then to the hostess, who was standing somewhat within the threshold, a gla.s.s of brandy-and-water in her hand, the third gla.s.s that stranger had called for during his half hour's rest in the hostelry, quoth the man,
”The taller gentleman yonder is surely your squire, is he not? but who is the shorter and younger person?”
The landlady put forth her head.
”Oh! that is a relation of the squire down on a visit, sir. I heard coachman say that the squire's taken to him hugely; and they do think at the Hall that the young gentleman will be his heir.”
”Aha!--indeed--his heir! What is the lad's name? What relation can he be to Mr. Darrell?”
”I don't know what relation exactly, sir; but he is one of the Haughtons, and they've been kin to the Fawley folks time out of mind.”
”Haughton?--aha! Thank you, ma'am. Change, if you please.”
The stranger tossed off his dram, and stretched his hand for his change.
”Beg pardon, sir, but this must be forring money,” said the landlady, turning a five-franc piece on her palm with suspicious curiosity.
”Foreign! Is it possible?” The stranger dived again into his pocket, and apparently with some difficulty hunted out half-a-crown.
”Sixpence more, if you please, sir; three brandies, and bread-and-cheese and the ale too, sir.”
”How stupid I am! I thought that French coin was a five s.h.i.+lling piece.
I fear I have no English money about me but this half-crown; and I can't ask you to trust me, as you don't know me.”
”Oh, sir, 't is all one if you know the squire. You may be pa.s.sing this way again.”
”I shall not forget my debt when I do, you may be sure,” said the stranger; and, with a nod, he walked away in the same direction as Darrell and Lionel had already taken, through a turnstile by a public path that, skirting the churchyard and the neighbouring parsonage, led along a cornfield to the demesnes of Fawley.
The path was narrow, the corn rising on either side, so that two persons could not well walk abreast. Lionel was some paces in advance, Darrell walking slow. The stranger followed at a distance: once or twice he quickened his pace, is if resolved to overtake Darrell; then apparently his mind misgave him, and he again fell back.