CHAPTER IV.
Revealing glimpses of Guy Darrell's past in his envied prime. Dig
but deep enough, and under all earth runs water, under all life runs
grief.
Alone in the streets, the vivacity which had characterized Darrell's
countenance as well as his words, while with his old school friend,
changed as suddenly and as completely into pensive abstracted gloom
as if he had been acting a part, and with the exit the acting ceased.
Disinclined to return yet to the solitude of his home, he walked on at
first mechanically, in the restless desire of movement, he cared not
whither. But as, thus chance-led, he found himself in the centre of that
long straight thoroughfare which connects what once were the separate
villages of Tyburn and Holborn, something in the desultory links of
revery suggested an object to his devious feet. He had but to follow
that street to his right hand, to gain in a quarter of an hour a sight of
the humble dwelling-house in which he had first settled down, after his
early marriage, to the arid labours of the bar. He would go, now that,
wealthy and renowned, he was revisiting the long-deserted focus of
English energies, and contemplate the obscure abode in which his powers
had been first concentrated on the pursuit of renown and wealth. Who
among my readers that may have risen on the glittering steep ("Ah, who
can tell how hard it is to climb!"*) has not been similarly attracted
towards the roof at the craggy foot of the ascent, under which golden
dreams refreshed his straining sinews?
*['Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar? BEATTIE.]
Somewhat quickening his steps, now that a bourne was assigned to them,
the man growing old in years, but, unhappily for himself, too tenacious
of youth in its grand discontent and keen susceptibilities to pain,
strode noiselessly on, under the gaslights, under the stars; gaslights
primly marshalled at equidistance; stars that seem to the naked eye
dotted over space without symmetry or method: man's order, near and
finite, is so distinct; the Maker's order remote, infinite, is so beyond
man's comprehension even of what is order!
Darrell paused hesitating. He had now gained a spot in which improvement
had altered the landmarks. The superb broad thoroughfare continued where
once it had vanished abrupt in a labyrinth of courts and alleys. But the
way was not hard to find. He turned a little towards the left,
recognizing, with admiring interest, in the gay, white, would-be Grecian
edifice, with its French grille, bronzed, gilded, the transformed Museum,
in the still libraries of which he had sometimes snatched a brief and
ghostly respite from books of law. Onwards yet through lifeless
Bloomsbury, not so far towards the last bounds of Atlas as the desolation
of Podden Place, but the solitude deepening as he passed. There it is,
a quiet street indeed! not a soul on its gloomy pavements, not even a
policeman's soul. Nought stirring save a stealthy, profligate, good-for-
nothing cat, flitting fine through yon area bars. Down that street had
he come, I trove, with a livelier, quicker step the day when, by the
strange good-luck which had uniformly attended his worldly career of
honours, he had been suddenly called upon to supply the place of an
absent senior, and in almost his earliest brief the Courts of Westminster
had recognized a master, come, I trove, with a livelier step, knocked at
that very door whereat he is halting now; entered the room where the
young wife sat, and at sight of her querulous peevish face, and at sound
of her unsympathizing languid voice, fled into his cupboard-like back
parlour, and muttered "Courage! Courage!" to endure the home he had
entered longing for a voice which should invite and respond to a cry of
joy.
How closed up, dumb, and blind looked the small mean house, with its
small mean door, its small mean rayless windows! Yet a FAME had been
born there! Who are the residents now? Buried in slumber, have they any
"golden dreams"? Works therein any struggling brain, to which the
prosperous man might whisper "Courage!" or beats, there, any troubled
heart to which faithful woman should murmur "Joy"? Who knows? London is
a wondrous poem, but each page of it is written in a different language,
--no lexicon yet composed for any.
Back through the street, under the gaslights, under the stars, went Guy
Darrell, more slow and more thoughtful. Did the comparison between what
he had been, what he was, the mean home just revisited, the stately home
to which he would return, suggest thoughts of natural pride? It would
not seem so; no pride in those close-shut lips, in that melancholy stoop.
He came into a quiet square,--still Bloomsbury,--and right before him was
a large respectable mansion, almost as large as that one in courtlier
quarters to which he loiteringly delayed the lone return. There, too,
had been for a time the dwelling which was called his home; there, when
gold was rolling in like a tide, distinction won, position assured;
there, not yet in Parliament, but foremost at the bar,--already pressed
by constituencies, already wooed by ministers; there, still young--
O luckiest of lawyers!--there had he moved his household gods. Fit
residence for a Prince of the Gown! Is it when living there that you
would envy the prosperous man? Yes, the moment his step quits that door;
but envy him when he enters its threshold?--nay, envy rather that
roofless Savoyard who has crept under yonder portico, asleep with his
ragged arm round the cage of his stupid dormice! There, in that great
barren drawing-room, sits a
"Pale and elegant Aspasia."
Well, but the wife's face is not querulous now. Look again,--anxious,
fearful, secret, sly. Oh! that fine lady, a Vipont Crooke, is not
contented to be wife to the wealthy, great Mr. Darrell. What wants she?
that he should be spouse to the fashionable fine Mrs. Darrell? Pride in
him! not a jot of it; such pride were unchristian. Were he proud of her,
as a Christian husband ought to be of so elegant a wife, would he still
be in Bloomsbury? Envy him! the high gentleman, so true to his blood,
all galled and blistered by the moral vulgarities of a tuft-hunting,
toad-eating mimic of the Lady Selinas. Envy him! Well, why not? All
women have their foibles. Wise husbands must bear and forbear. Is that
all? wherefore, then, is her aspect so furtive, wherefore on his a wild,
vigilant sternness? Tut, what so brings into coveted fashion a fair lady
exiled to Bloomsbury as the marked adoration of a lord, not her own, who
gives law to St. James's! Untempted by passion, cold as ice to
affection; if thawed to the gush of a sentiment secretly preferring the
husband she chose, wooed, and won to idlers less gifted even in outward
attractions,--all this, yet seeking, coquetting for, the eclat of
dishonour! To elope? Oh, no, too wary for that, but to be gazed at and
talked of as the fair Mrs. Darrell, to whom the Lovelace of London was so
fondly devoted. Walk in, haughty son of the Dare-all. Darest thou ask
who has just left thy house? Darest thou ask what and whence is the note
that sly hand has secreted? Darest thou?--perhaps yes: what then? canst
thou lock up thy wife? canst thou poniard the Lovelace? Lock up the air!
poniard all whose light word in St. James's can bring into fashion the
matron of Bloomsbury! Go, lawyer, go, study briefs, and be parchment.
Agonies, agonies, shot again through Guy Darrell's breast as he looked on
that large, most respectable house, and remembered his hourly campaign
against disgrace! He has triumphed. Death fights for him: on the very
brink of the last scandal, a cold, caught at some Vipont's ball, became
fever; and so from that door the Black Horses bore away the Bloomsbury
Dame, ere she was yet--the fashion! Happy in grief the widower who may,
with confiding hand, ransack the lost wife's harmless desk, sure that no
thought concealed from him in life will rise accusing from the treasured
papers. But that pale proud mourner, hurrying the eye over sweet-scented
billets; compelled, in very justice to the dead, to convince himself that
the mother of his children was corrupt only at heart,--that the Black
Horses had come to the door in time,--and, wretchedly consoled by that
niggardly conviction, flinging into the flames the last flimsy tatters on
which his honour (rock-like in his own keeping) had been fluttering to
and fro in the charge of a vain treacherous fool,--envy you that mourner?
No! not even in his release. Memory is not nailed down in the velvet
coffin; and to great loyal natures less bitter is the memory of the lost
when hallowed by tender sadness than when coupled with scorn and shame.
The wife is dead. Dead, too, long years ago, the Lothario! The world
has forgotten them; they fade out of this very record when ye turn the
page; no influence, no bearing have they on such future events as may
mark what yet rests of life to Guy Darrell. But as he there stands and
gazes into space, the two forms are before his eye as distinct as if
living still. Slowly, slowly he gazes them down: the false smiles
flicker away from their feeble lineaments; woe and terror on their
aspects,--they sink, they shrivel, they dissolve!
