"Take that for granted. Dick Fairthorn receives my rents, and looks to my various investments; and I accept him as an indisputable authority when I say that, what with the rental of lands I purchased in my poor boy's lifetime and the interest on my much more lucrative moneyed capital, you may safely whisper to all ladies likely to feel interest in that diffusion of knowledge, 'Thirty-five thousand a year, and an old fool.'"
"I certainly shall not say an old fool, for I am the same age as yourself; and if I had thirty-five thousand pounds a year, I would marry too."
"You would! Old fool!" said Darrell, turning away.
CHAPTER IV.
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.