Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 1.djvu/104

 were happy days, and proud ones! It is true that I order the dinner here, but it can't be the same thing. Do you like fillet of veal?—we have one to-day."

"We used to have fillet of veal at school on Sundays. I thought it good then."

"It makes a nice mince," said Mr. Fairthorn, with a sensual movement of his lips. "One must think of dinner when one lives in the country: so little else to think of! Not that Mr. Darrell does, but then he is granite!"

"Still," said Lionel, smiling, "I do not get my answer. Why was the house uncompleted? and why did Mr. Darrell retire from public life?"

"He took both into his head; and when a thing once gets there, it is no use asking why. But," added Fairthorn, and his innocent ugly face changed into an expression of earnest sadness,—"but no doubt he had his reasons. He has reasons for all he does, only they lie far, far away from what appears on the surface,—far as that rivulet lies from its source! My dear young sir, Mr. Darrell has known griefs on which it does not become you and me to talk. He never talks of them. The least I can do for my benefactor is not to pry into his secrets, nor babble them out. And he is so kind, so good, never gets into a passion; but it is so awful to wound him,—it gives him such pain; that's why he frightens me,—frightens me horribly; and so he will you when you come to know him. Prodigious mind!--granite,—overgrown with sensitive plants. Yes, a little music will do us both good."

Mr. Fairthorn screwed his flute, an exceedingly handsome one. He pointed out its beauties to Lionel—a present from Mr. Darrell last Christmas—and then he began. Strange thing, Art! especially music. Out of an art, a man may be so trivial you would mistake him for an imbecile,—at best a grown infant. Put him into his art, and how high he soars above you! How quietly he enters into a heaven of which he has become a denizen, and unlocking the gates with his golden key, admits you to follow, a humble reverent visitor.

In his art, Fairthorn was certainly a master, and the air he now played was exquisitely soft and plaintive; it accorded with the clouded yet quiet sky, with the lone but summer landscape, with Lionel's melancholic but not afflicted train of thought. The boy could only murmur "Beautiful!" when the musician ceased.

"It is an old air," said Fairthorn; "I don't think it is known. I found its scale scrawled down in a copy of the '