Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 2.djvu/412



Darrell silently returned to Alban Morley the papers over which he had cast his eye as they walked slowly to and fro the sloping banks of the lake.

"It is well," said he, glancing fondly, as Fairthorn had glanced before him, towards the old House, now freed from doom, and permitted to last its time. "It is well," he repeated, looking away towards that part of the landscape where he could just catch a glimpse of Sophy's light form beyond the barbed thorn-tree; "it is well," he repeated thrice with a sigh. "Poor human nature! Alban, can you conceive it? I, who once so dreaded that that poor child should prove to be of my blood, now, in knowing that she is not, feel a void, a loss! To Lionel I am so distant a kinsman!--to his wife, to his children, what can I be? A rich old man; the sooner he is in his grave the better. A few tears, and then the will! But, as your nephew says, 'This life is but a school;' the new-comer in the last form thinks the head-boy just leaving so old! And to us, looking back, it seems but the same yesterday whether we were the last comer or the head-boy."

"I thought," said Alban, plaintively, "that, for a short time at least, I had done with 'painful subjects.' You revel in them! County Guy, you have not left school yet; leave it with credit; win the best prize." And Alban plunged at once into THE CRISIS. He grew eloquent; the Party, the Country, the Great Measure to be intrusted to Darrell, if he would but undertake it as a member of the Cabinet; the Peerage, the House of Vipont, and immortal glory!--eloquent as Ulysses haranguing the son of Peleus in Troilus and Cressida.

Darrell listened coldly; only while Alban dwelt on "the Measure," in which, when it was yet too unripe for practical statesmen, he had attached his faith as a thinker, the orator's eye flashed with young fire. A great truth is eternally clear to a great heart that has once nourished its germ and foreseen its fruits. But when Alban quitted that part of his theme, all the rest seemed wearisome to his listener. They had now wound their walk to the opposite side of the lake, and paused near the thick beech-trees, hallowed and saddened by such secret associations to the mournful owner.

"No, my dear Alban," said Darrell, "I cannot summon