Lionel

“ He sought now, on the contrary, to plumb thoroughly the more hidden depths which lurk in the nature of every human being, and which, in Lionel, were the more difficult to discern from the vivacity and candour which covered with so smooth and charming a surface a pride tremulously sensitive, and an ambition that startled himself in the hours when solitude and revery reflect upon the visions of youth the giant outline of its own hopes. ”

“ Fiery as his comrades the Napiers, of a stern code as a soldier, and a lofty honor as a man, haughty in pride and swift to passion, old Sir Lionel was stung to the quick by his son's fall, and would have sooner, by a thousand-fold, have followed him to his grave, than have seen him live to endure that tacit dismissal from the service of the country—the deepest shame, in his sight, that could have touched his race. ”

“ Not a single window relieved the monotony, usually so painful to the artist or the adventurer. And yet Lionel puffed at his pipe, gazing silently in front of him as if at a masterpiece by Whistler.
When the landlady had transferred the tea-things to a tray, shaken the crumbs from the table-cloth into the empty grate and folded it, she nerved herself for a direct attack. Placing her arms akimbo—an attitude usually denoting truculent defiance or a pleasurable sense of injustice—she pronounced her lodger's name. Lionel started, as if made aware of her presence for the first time. ”

“ While endeavoring to persuade himself that Lionel's lot was uppermost in his mind, his heart would force the truth upon him that Lady Eleanor and Helen's fate was, in reality, a heavier stroke of fortune. Lionel was a soldier, ardent and daring, fond of his profession, and far more ambitious of distinction than attached to the life of pleasure a court and a great capital suggested; but they who had never known the want of every luxury that can embellish life, whose whole existence had been like some fairy dream of pleasure, how were they to bear up against the dreadful shock? ”

“ Enchanted to again meet her eyes, the youth bowed with intense respect, and advanced a few paces, as if with intention to speak to her, though immediately and with still more precipitance he retreated, from being ready with nothing to say.
Lionel, going up to him, and pulling him by the arm, cried: 'Why, man! what's come to you? These are worse heroics than I have seen you in yet.'
The bright eyes of Indiana being still fixed upon him, he disdained all notice of Lionel, beyond a silent repulse. ”

“ No life could be more methodical; yet to Lionel it had an animating charm, for his interest in his host daily increased, and varied his thoughts with perpetual occupation. Darrell, on the contrary, while more kind and cordial, more cautiously on his guard not to wound his young guest's susceptibilities than he had been before the quarrel and its reconciliation, did not seem to feel for Lionel the active interest which Lionel felt for him. He did not, as most clever men are apt to do in their intercourse with youth, attempt to draw him out, plumb his intellect, or guide his tastes. ”

“ You are like a brook that flows the faster the more water it receives; one of those vases, open at the ends, which embellish the statues of naiads and river-gods; the water that rushes through them doesn't stop for a moment."
"Good, Lionel, good!" cried the young man; "I like to see you in a fit of temper; it makes you poetic. At such times, you are yourself a stream, a river of metaphors, a torrent of eloquence, a reservoir of allegories."
"Oh! it's all very well to laugh!" exclaimed Lionel angrily; "we are not going to Luchon." ”

“ When I tell you that I know where it was found and how you lost it, you will not wonder at the shock the discovery has been to me. I hush it up, Lionel, for your late father’s sake, as much as for that of the name of Verner. I am about to seal it up that it may be given to you after my death: and you will then know why I disinherit you. S. V.”
Lionel gazed on the lines like one in a dream. They were in the handwriting of his uncle. Understand them, he could not. He took up the glove, a thick, fawn-coloured riding-glove, and remembered it for one of his own. ”

“ By this time Lionel was in a very good humor with himself. Warned by his recent heroism and virtue, flattered by the interest shown in him by this delightful creature, he was prepared for anything.
"I never ask a woman for a reason," he said, smiling. "I have the most complete faith." ”

“ When Lionel had in former days accepted his challenge to fight, it was with some kind of impatient resolve to teach him a wholesome lesson and brush him aside. And he had regarded his running after Miss Burgoyne with a sort of good-natured toleration and contempt; there were always those young fools in the wake of actresses. But that he, Lionel, should be afraid of this young idiot? What was there to be afraid of? He was no swashbuckler—this pallid youth with the thin lips, who concentrated all his attention on the cards, and had no word or jest for his neighbors. ”

“ He saw clearly enough the embroilment into which Lionel had landed himself; but he could not see so clearly how he was to get out of it. One question he forgot to ask: what had induced that mood of petulance or recklessness, or both combined, in which Lionel had wilfully and madly pledged all his future life? ”

“ And when Lionel had finished his share of the feast, eating fast, as spirited, impatient boys formed to push on in life and spoil their digestion are apt to do; and while Sophy was still lingering over the last of the strawberries, he threw himself back on his chair and drew forth his letter. Lionel was extremely fond of his mother, but her letters were not often those which a boy is over-eager to read. It is not all mothers who understand what boys are,—their quick susceptibilities, their precocious manliness, all their mystical ways and oddities. ”

“ Sir Lionel held my arm to keep me from tripping, and we descended the steps slowly, the rain that sprayed against our faces smelling salt as the sea, its briny "tang" mingling with the fragrance of honeysuckle and fuchsias. The combination, distilled by the night, was intoxicating; and if I ever smell it again, even at the other end of the world, my thoughts will run back to Sir Lionel and the fairy village of Clovelly. ”

“ In a word we should begin with the Heroic, if we would learn the Human. But though to himself Lionel thus secretly prescribed a certain superiority of type, to be sedulously aimed at, even if never actually attained, he was wholly without pedantry and arrogance towards his own contemporaries. From this he was saved not only by good-nature, animal spirits, frank hardihood, but by the very affluence of ideas which animated his tongue, coloured his language, and whether to young or old, wise or dull, made his conversation racy and original. ”

“ HOW SIR LIONEL SLEW SIR COLGREVANCE, AND HOW AFTER HE WOULD HAVE SLAIN SIR BORS
Then often Colgrevance cried upon Sir Bors: Why will ye let me die here for your sake? if it please you that I die for you the death, it will please me the better for to save a worthy man. With that word Sir Lionel smote off the helm from his head. ”

“ Fascination is the only word that can express the charm of his manner. To bring Lionel more particularly under the Prince's notice, has long been a favorite scheme of mine; and I may say, without arrogance, that my opportunities are not inferior to most men's in this respect; I am an old courtier now,—no small boast for one who still retains his share of favor. ”

“ Lionel answered her sharply, with incisive curtness:
“You have not painted a flattering portrait of politicians, yet you urge me to become one of them.”
“I described them as I see them, because you are so preposterously modest. You look up to them. Many of them could look up to you. Place and power are easily within your grasp. Men with half your advantages have climbed high.” ”

“ In common with all who in youth aspire to be one day noted from "the undistinguishable many," Lionel had formed to himself a certain ideal standard, above the ordinary level of what the world is contented to call honest, or esteem clever. ”

“ He was drawn to them all, but Lionel attracted him the most strongly. Some of his liking for Lionel was mere instinctive recognition of an inherent fineness and simplicity in the man's character. But there was more than that. He had often felt that in life, as in nature, there is a constant effort to remedy the unnatural. The inscrutable agency behind life offers always wisely some restoration or readjustment of a balance disturbed. He felt that a tide had quickened in his life, at the last ebbing of the old. In the old life all had been to please Ottalie. Life was more serious now. ”

“ He crossed over the mounds to shake hands with Lionel.
Lionel drew him into the vicarage garden, amidst the trees. It was shady there; the outer world shut out from eye and ear.
"I cannot beat about the bush; I cannot dissemble," began Lionel, in deep agitation. "Tell me your true opinion of this business, for the love of Heaven! I have come down to ask it of you."
The vicar paused. "My dear friend, I feel almost afraid to give it to you."
"I have been speaking with Jan. He thinks it may be Frederick Massingbird—not dead, but alive."
"I fear it is," answered the clergyman. ”

“ Lionel sprang to the breast that opened to him; and if Darrell had planned how best to remove from the young man’s mind forever the possibility of one selfish pang, no craft could have attained his object like that touching confidence before which the disparities between youth and age literally vanished. And, both made equal, both elevated alike, verily I know not which at the moment felt the elder or the younger! Two noble hearts, intermingled in one emotion, are set free from all time save the present: par each with each, they meet as brothers twin-born. ”

“ Lionel said, with a bit of a shrug. "He doesn't need to go to his father, or to the Jews either, when he can plunder me. And such a run of luck as he has had is simply astounding—"
"It isn't luck at all," the other interrupted. "It's your play. You play too bold a game—too bold when you know he is going to play a bolder. ”

“ But it was only a very small part of Guy Darrell the man of which the world could say "mine."
To Lionel he let out, as if involuntarily, the more amiable, tender, poetic attributes of his varying, complex, uncomprehended character; not professedly confiding, but not taking pains to conceal. Hearing what worldings would call "Sentiment" in Lionel, he seemed to glide softly down to Lionel's own years, and talk "sentiment" in return. After all, this skilled lawyer, this noted politician, had a great dash of the boy still in him. Reader, did you ever meet a really clever man who had not? ”

“ After the rebuff, Lionel was crossing the hall, when he suddenly halted, as if a thought struck him, and he turned back to the study. If ever a man’s attitude bespoke utter grief and prostration, Mr. Verner’s did, as Lionel opened the door. His head and hands had fallen, and his stick had dropped upon the carpet. He started out of his reverie at the appearance of Lionel, and made an effort to recover his stick. Lionel hastened to pick it up for him.
“I have been thinking, sir, that it might be well for Decima to go in the carriage to the station, to receive Miss Tempest. ”

“ Enter Sir Lionel.
Sir Lionel. Lord, Lord, what a careless world is this! neither bride nor bridegroom ready; time to go to church, and not a man unroosted: this age has not seen a young gallant rise with a candle; we live drowned in feather-beds, and dream of no other felicity. This was not the life when I was a young man. What makes us so weak as we are now? A feather-bed. What so unapt for exercise? A feather-bed. What breeds such pains and aches in our bones? why, a feather-bed or a wench—or at least a wench in a feather-bed. ”

“ The erratic life poor Lionel led, and which had been almost compulsory, the weary cynicism which was the outcome of the life enforced upon him, by his mother's frailty and his father's lasting grief thereat, often palled upon his real nature. But as he never expected to meet a woman who could hold him, he frequently gave himself, epicurean-like, to the pleasure of the hour. ”

“ He was a boy in real life, and his name was Jim, and he read about a boy in a book whose name was Lionel: and the more he read about Lionel the more he wanted to be like Lionel, and wished that he had been christened Lionel—for Lionel was a hero, and did things by nature without previous practice. ”

“ I don’t know,” she answered, looking up at him in all confiding simplicity. “When papa comes home, I suppose.”
Lionel crossed over to where she was sitting.
“Lucy, I thank you for your partisanship of Jan,” he said, in a low, earnest tone. “I do not believe anybody living knows his worth.”
“Yes; for I do,” she replied, her eyes sparkling.
“Only don’t you get to like him too much—as Lady Verner hinted,” continued Lionel, his eyes dancing with merriment at his own words. ”

“ For instance, who is to prove that you did not, when you were sitting on the terrace, steal across to a rendezvous at the Willow-pond, or cut across to it when you were at the post-office at Deerham?”
“I certainly did not,” said Lionel, quietly, taking the remarks only as they were meant—for an illustration. “It might, sir, as you observe, be difficult to prove a decided alibi. But”—he rose and bent to Mr. Verner with a bright smile, a clear, truthful eye—“I do not think you need one to believe me.”
“No, Lionel, I do not. Is John Massingbird in the dining-room?” ”