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!
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