CHAPTER XI.
A man of the world, having accepted a troublesome charge, considers
"what he will do with it;" and, having promptly decided, is sure,
first, that he could not have done better; and, secondly, that much
may be said to prove that he could not have done worse.
Reserving to a later occasion anymore detailed description of Colonel
Morley, it suffices for the present to say that he was a man of a very
fine understanding as applied to the special world in which he lived.
Though no one had a more numerous circle of friends, and though with many
of those friends he was on that footing of familiar intimacy which
Darrell's active career once, and his rigid seclusion of late, could not
have established with any idle denizen of that brilliant society in which
Colonel Morley moved and had his being, yet to Alban Morley's heart (a
heart not easily reached) no friend was so dear as Guy Darrell. They had
entered Eton on the same day, left it the same day, lodged while there in
the same house; and though of very different characters, formed one of
those strong, imperishable, brotherly affections which the Fates weave
into the very woof of existence.
Darrell's recommendation would have secured to any young protege Colonel
Morley's gracious welcome and invaluable advice. But, both as Darrell's
acknowledged kinsman and as Charles Haughton's son, Lionel called forth
his kindliest sentiments and obtained his most sagacious deliberations.
He had already seen the boy several times before waiting on Mrs.
Haughton, deeming it would please her to defer his visit until she could
receive him in all the glories of Gloucester Place; and he had taken
Lionel into high favour and deemed him worthy of a conspicuous place in
the world. Though Darrell in his letter to Colonel Morley had
emphatically distinguished the position of Lionel, as a favoured kinsman,
from that of a presumptive or even a probable heir, yet the rich man had
also added: "But I wish him to take rank as the representative to the
Haughtons; and, whatever I may do with the bulk of my fortune, I shall
insure to him a liberal independence. The completion of his education,
the adequate allowance to him, the choice of a profession, are matters in
which I entreat you to act for yourself, as if you were his guardian. I
am leaving England: I may be abroad for years." Colonel Morley, in
accepting the responsibilities thus pressed on him, brought to bear upon
his charge subtle discrimination, as well as conscientious anxiety.
He saw that Lionel's heart was set upon the military profession, and that
his power of application seemed lukewarm and desultory when not cheered
and concentred by enthusiasm, and would, therefore, fail him if directed
to studies which had no immediate reference to the objects of his
ambition. The Colonel, accordingly, dismissed the idea of sending him
for three years to a university. Alban Morley summed up his theories on
the collegiate ordeal in these succinct aphorisms: "Nothing so good as a
university education, nor worse than a university without its education.
Better throw a youth at once into the wider sphere of a capital--provided
you there secure to his social life the ordinary checks of good company,
the restraints imposed by the presence of decorous women, and men of
grave years and dignified repute--than confine him to the exclusive
society of youths of his own age, the age of wild spirits and
unreflecting imitation, unless he cling to the safeguard which is found
in hard reading, less by the book-knowledge it bestows than by the
serious and preoccupied mind which it abstracts from the coarser
temptations."
But Lionel, younger in character than in years, was too boyish as yet to
be safely consigned to those trials of tact and temper which await the
neophyte who enters on life through the doors of a mess-room. His pride
was too morbid, too much on the alert for offence; his frankness too
crude, his spirit too untamed by the insensible discipline of social
commerce.
Quoth the observant man of the world: "Place his honour in his own
keeping, and he will carry it about with him on full cock, to blow off
a friend's head or his own before the end of the first month. Huffy!
decidedly huffy! and of all causes that disturb regiments, and induce
courts-martial, the commonest cause is a huffy lad! Pity! for that
youngster has in him the right metal,--spirit and talent that should make
him a first-rate soldier. It would be time well spent that should join
professional studies with that degree of polite culture which gives
dignity and cures hulness. I must get him out of London, out of England;
cut him off from his mother's apron-strings, and the particular friends
of his poor father who prowl unannounced into the widow's drawing-room.
He shall go to Paris; no better place to learn military theories, and be
civilized out of huffy dispositions. No doubt my old friend, the
chevalier, who has the art strategic at his fingerends, might be induced
to take him en pension, direct his studies, and keep him out of harm's
way. I can secure to him the entree into the circles of the rigid old
Faubourg St. Germain, where manners are best bred, and household ties
most respected. Besides, as I am so often at Paris myself, I shall have
him under my eye, and a few years there, spent in completing him as man,
may bring him nearer to that marshal's baton which every recruit should
have in his eye, than if I started him at once a raw boy, unable to take
care of himself as an ensign, and unfitted, save by mechanical routine,
to take care of others, should he live to buy the grade of a colonel."
The plans thus promptly formed Alban Morley briefly explained to Lionel
when the boy came to breakfast in Curzon Street; requesting him to obtain
Mrs. Haughton's acquiesence in that exercise of the discretionary powers
with which he had been invested by Mr. Darrell. To Lionel the
proposition that commended the very studies to which his tastes directed
his ambition, and placed his initiation into responsible manhood among
scenes bright to his fancy, because new to his experience, seemed of
course the perfection of wisdom. Less readily pleased was poor Mrs.
Haughton, when her son returned to communicate the arrangement, backing a
polite and well-worded letter from the Colonel with his own more artless
eloquence. Instantly she flew off on the wing of her "little tempers."
"What! her only son taken from her; sent to that horrid Continent, just
when she was so respectably settled! What was the good of money if she
was to be parted from her boy! Mr. Darrell might take the money back
if he pleased; she would write and tell him so. Colonel Morley had no
feeling; and she was shocked to think Lionel was in such unnatural hands.
She saw very plainly that he no longer cared for her,--a serpent's
tooth," etc. But as soon as the burst was over, the sky cleared and Mrs.
Haughton became penitent and sensible. Then her grief for Lionel's loss
was diverted by preparations for his departure. There was his wardrobe
to see to; a patent portmanteau to purchase and to fill. And, all done,
the last evening mother and son spent together, though painful at the
moment, it would be happiness for both hereafter to recall! Their hands
clasped in each other, her head leaning on his young shoulder, her tears
kissed so soothingly away, and soft words of kindly motherly counsel,
sweet promises of filial performances. Happy, thrice happy, as an after
remembrance, be the final parting between hopeful son and fearful parent
at the foot of that mystic bridge, which starts from the threshold of
home,--lost in the dimness of the far-opposing shore!--bridge over which
goes the boy who will never return but as the man.
