Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 2.djvu/370

 have a share in the sacrifice. What follows is not the dictate of pride, if I can read myself aright. No; it is the final completion and surrender of the object on which so much of my life has been wasted--but a surrender that satisfies my crotchets of honour. At all events, if it be pride in disguise, it will demand no victim in others; you and I may have a sharp pang--we must bear it, Dick."

"What on earth is coming now?" said Dick, dolefully.

"The due to the dead, Richara Fairthorn. This nook of fair England, in which I learned from the dead to love honour--this poor domain of Fawley--shall go in bequest to the College at which I was reared."

"Sir!"

"It will serve for a fellowship or two to honest, bravehearted young scholars. It will be thus, while English institutions may last, devoted to Learning and Honour. It may sustain for mankind some ambition more generous than mine, it appears, ever was--settled thus, not in mine, but my dear father's name, like the Darrell Museum. These are my dues to the dead, Dick! And the old house thus becomes useless. The new house was ever a folly. They must go down, both, as soon as the young folks are married;--not a stone stand on stone! The ploughshare shall pass over their sites! And this task I order you to see done. I have not strength. You will then hasten to join me at Sorrento, that corner of earth on which Horace wished to breathe his last sigh.

'Ille to mecum locus et beatae Postulant arces--ibi--tu '"

"Don't, sir, don't. Horace again! It is too much." Fairthorn was choking; but as if the idea presented to him was really too monstrous for belief, he clutched at Darrell with so uncertain and vehement a hand that he almost caught him by the throat, and sobbed out, "You must be joking."

"Seriously and solemnly, Richara Fairthorn," said Darrell, gently disentangling the fingers that threatened him with strangulation, "seriously and solemnly I have uttered to you my deliberate purpose. I implore you, in the name of our life-long friendship, to face this pain as I do--resolutely, cheerfully. I implore you to execute to the letter the instructions I shall leave with you on quitting