What Will He Do with It? — Complete. Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон

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СКАЧАТЬ words appear as if spoken mechanically, and assisted towards that seeming of listless indifference to those whom he addressed, by which he wounded vanity without, perhaps, any malice prepense. But it was an eye in which the pupil could suddenly expand, the hue change from gray to dark, and the cold still brightness flash into vivid fire. It could not have occurred to any one, even to the most commonplace woman, to have described Darrell’s as a handsome face; the expression would have seemed trivial and derogatory; the words that would have occurred to all, would have been somewhat to this effect: “What a magnificent countenance! What a noble head!” Yet an experienced physiognomist might have noted that the same lineaments which bespoke a virtue bespoke also its neighbouring vice; that with so much will there went stubborn obstinacy; that with that power of grasp there would be the tenacity in adherence which narrows, in astringing, the intellect; that a prejudice once conceived, a passion once cherished, would resist all rational argument for relinquishment. When men of this mould do relinquish prejudice or passion, it is by their own impulse, their own sure conviction that what they hold is worthless: then they do not yield it graciously; they fling it from them in scorn, but not a scorn that consoles. That which they thus wrench away had “grown a living part of themselves;” their own flesh bleeds; the wound seldom or never heals. Such men rarely fail in the achievement of what they covet, if the gods are neutral; but, adamant against the world, they are vulnerable through their affections. Their love is intense, but undemonstrative; their hatred implacable, but unrevengeful,—too proud to revenge, too galled to pardon.

      There stood Guy Darrell, to whom the bar had destined its highest honours, to whom the senate had accorded its most rapturous cheers; and the more you gazed on him as he there stood, the more perplexed became the enigma,—how with a career sought with such energy, advanced with such success, the man had abruptly subsided into a listless recluse, and the career had been voluntarily resigned for a home without neighbours, a hearth without children.

      “I had no idea,” said Lionel, as Darrell rode slowly away, soon lost from sight amidst the thick foliage of summer trees,—“I had no idea that my cousin was so young!”

      “Oh, yes,” said Mr. Fairthorn; “he is only a year older than I am!”

      “Older than you!” exclaimed Lionel, staring in blunt amaze at the elderly-looking personage beside him; “yet true, he told me so himself.”

      “And I am fifty-one last birthday.” “Mr. Darrell fifty-two! Incredible!”

      “I don’t know why we should ever grow old, the life we lead,” observed Mr. Fairthorn, readjusting his spectacles. “Time stands so still! Fishing, too, is very conducive to longevity. If you will follow me, we will get the rods; and the flute,—you are quite sure you would like the flute? Yes! thank you, my dear young sir. And yet there are folks who prefer the fiddle!”

      “Is not the sun a little too bright for the fly at present; and will you not, in the meanwhile, show me over the house?”

      “Very well; not that this house has much worth seeing. The other indeed would have had a music-room! But, after all, nothing like the open air for the flute. This way.”

      I spare thee, gentle reader, the minute inventory of Fawley Manor House. It had nothing but its antiquity to recommend it. It had a great many rooms, all, except those used as the dining-room and library, very small, and very low,—innumerable closets, nooks,—unexpected cavities, as if made on purpose for the venerable game of hide-and-seek. Save a stately old kitchen, the offices were sadly defective even for Mr. Darrell’s domestic establishment, which consisted but of two men and four maids (the stablemen not lodging in the house). Drawing-room properly speaking that primitive mansion had none. At some remote period a sort of gallery under the gable roofs (above the first floor), stretching from end to end of the house, might have served for the reception of guests on grand occasions; for fragments of mouldering tapestry still here and there clung to the walls; and a high chimney-piece, whereon, in plaster relief, was commemorated the memorable fishing party of Antony and Cleopatra, retained patches of colour and gilding, which must when fresh have made the Egyptian queen still more appallingly hideous, and the fish at the end of Antony’s hook still less resembling any creature known to ichthyologists.

      The library had been arranged into shelves from floor to roof by Mr. Darrell’s father, and subsequently, for the mere purpose of holding as many volumes as possible, brought out into projecting wings (college-like) by Darrell himself, without any pretension to mediaeval character. With this room communicated a small reading-closet, which the host reserved to himself; and this, by a circular stair cut into the massive wall, ascended first into Mr. Darrell’s sleeping-chamber, and thence into a gable recess that adjoined the gallery, and which the host had fitted up for the purpose of scientific experiments in chemistry or other branches of practical philosophy. These more private rooms Lionel was not permitted to enter. Altogether the house was one of those cruel tenements which it would be a sin to pull down, or even materially to alter, but which it would be an hourly inconvenience for a modern family to inhabit. It was out of all character with Mr. Darrell’s former position in life, or with the fortune which Lionel vaguely supposed him to possess, and considerably underrated. Like Sir Nicholas Bacon, the man had grown too large for his habitation.

      “I don’t wonder,” said Lionel, as, their wanderings over, he and Fairthorn found themselves in the library, “that Mr. Darrell began to build a new house. But it would have been a great pity to pull down this for it.”

      “Pull down this! Don’t hint at such an idea to Mr. Darrell. He would as soon have pulled down the British Monarchy! Nay, I suspect, sooner.”

      “But the new building must surely have swallowed up the old one?”

      “Oh, no; Mr. Darrell had a plan by which he would have enclosed this separately in a kind of court, with an open screen-work or cloister; and it was his intention to appropriate it entirely to mediaeval antiquities, of which he has a wonderful collection. He had a notion of illustrating every earlier reign in which his ancestors flourished,—different apartments in correspondence with different dates. It would have been a chronicle of national manners.”

      “But, if it be not an impertinent question, where is this collection? In London?”

      “Hush! hush! I will give you a peep of some of the treasures, only don’t betray me.”

      Fairthorn here, with singular rapidity, considering that he never moved in a straightforward direction, undulated into the open air in front of the house, described a rhomboid towards a side-buttress in the new building, near to which was a postern-door; unlocked that door from a key in his pocket, and, motioning Lionel to follow him, entered within the ribs of the stony skeleton. Lionel followed in a sort of supernatural awe, and beheld, with more substantial alarm, Mr. Fairthorn winding up an inclined plank which lie embraced with both arms, and by which he ultimately ascended to a timber joist in what should have been an upper floor, only flooring there was none. Perched there, Fairthorn glared down on Lionel through his spectacles. “Dangerous,” he said whisperingly; “but one gets used to everything! If you feel afraid, don’t venture!”

      Lionel, animated by that doubt of his courage, sprang up the plank, balancing himself schoolboy fashion, with outstretched arms, and gained the side of his guide.

      “Don’t touch me!” exclaimed Mr. Fairthorn, shrinking, “or we shall both be over. Now observe and imitate.” Dropping himself, then, carefully and gradually, till he dropped on the timber joist as if it were a velocipede, his long legs dangling down, he with thigh and hand impelled himself onward till he gained the ridge of a wall, on which he delivered his person, and wiped his spectacles.

      Lionel was not long before he stood in the same place. “Here СКАЧАТЬ