Mrs. Darrell

“ It makes him look very handsome, though, you know; I don’t think he’d look half so handsome if he hadn’t anything on his mind. He was awfully dull and gloomy after you went away, Nell; I’m sure he must have been in love with you. Mrs. Darrell says he wasn’t; and that he admires another person; quite a different person. Do you think I’m the person, Eleanor dear?” asked the young lady, blushing and smiling, as she looked shyly up at her companion’s grave face.
“I don’t know, Laura; but I almost hope not, for I should be very sorry if you were to marry Launcelot Darrell,” Eleanor said. ”

“ Mrs. Darrell had not gone abroad yet. She lived a useless, listless life, doing nothing, and caring for nothing, as it seemed. More than once she made preparations for her departure, and then changed her mind at the last moment.
Late in June we heard of Mr. Egerton's return to Cumber; and a few days after that he came to Thornleigh. Mrs. Darrell was in her own room, Milly and I alone in the drawing-room, when he called. My poor girl turned very pale, and the tears came into her eyes as she and Angus Egerton met. He spoke of her loss with extreme delicacy, and was full of tender sympathy. ”

“ A slight, muscular figure flung itself forward like a diver taking the surf, and Darrell felt two arms gripping his right leg tenaciously, while eager hands clutched him on every side. A fierce kick ended in the crunch of leather against flesh. There was a gasping grunt, and the clinging hold relaxed. The secret-service agent grasped a wrist, and, with a practiced twist, a heave of his splendid shoulder muscles and taut biceps, he sent another little man spinning through the air to land a dozen feet away with a dull, bone-cracking thud. ”

“ If Darrell does not choose to marry and have sons of his own, he has no right to load a poor boy with benefits, and say: 'There is but one way to prove your gratitude; remember my ancestors, and be miserable for the rest of your days!' Darrell, forsooth, intends to leave to Lionel the transmission of the old Darrell name; and the old Darrell name must not be tarnished by the marriage on which Lionel has unluckily set his heart! I respect the old name; but it is not like the House of Vipont—a British Institution. ”

“ Lady Darrell had already written to Omberleigh, and, through an agent there, had secured beautiful apartments. When Miss Hastings half remonstrated with her, she laughed.
"I have nothing to do," she said, "but make every one happy; and it is my duty to find you always a comfortable home."
Lady Darrell looked, as she was in those days, a most happy woman. She seemed to have grown younger and fairer. The height of her ambition, the height of her happiness, was reached at last. She was rich in the world's goods, and it was in her power to make the man she loved rich and powerful too. ”

“ Darrell, he authorised Mrs. Lyndsay to propose such a salary as could not fail to secure a teacher of such rare qualifications. And thus Arabella became governess to Miss Darrell.
There is a kind of young lady of whom her nearest relations will say, "I can't make that girl out." Matilda Darrell was that kind of young lady. She talked very little; she moved very noiselessly; she seemed to regard herself as a secret which she had solemnly sworn not to let out. She had been steeped in slyness from her early infancy by a sly mother. Mrs. Darrell was a woman who had always something to conceal. ”

“ Darrell raised his head, his eyes looking straight into the searching dark eyes, so like his own.
"My little mother," he replied, tenderly, "don't think that your teachings all the past years or the lessons of your own sweet life were lost in those two years; their influence lived even when memory had failed."
He bent and kissed her, then added: "She was scarcely more than a child; not so brilliant, perhaps, as Marion, but beautiful, good, and pure as the driven snow."
Hearing his father's voice outside, Darrell rose and, picking up his journal, opened it at the story of his love and Kate's. ”

“ Darrell's second marriage. It was very simple in its wording. To Julian Stormont he left a sum of five thousand pounds, to be paid out his funded property; all the rest of this property, with the sum to be realised by the sale of the business at North Shields and its belongings—an amount likely to be very large—was to be divided equally between Mrs. Darrell and her stepdaughter. Thornleigh Manor was left to Mrs. Darrell for her life, but was to revert to Milly, or Milly's heirs, at her death; and Milly was to be entitled to occupy her old home until her marriage. ”

“ There are plenty of people who would care—papa, to begin with.'
'Well, I suppose my uncle William would be rather sorry. He would lose a good man of business, and he would scarcely like going back to the counting-house, and giving himself up to all the dry details of commerce once more.'
The travellers arrived soon after this. Mr. Darrell greeted his daughter with much tenderness; but I noticed a kind of languor in Mrs. Darrell's embrace, very different from her reception of Milly at that first meeting which I had witnessed more than a year before. ”

“ Of course all this makes Mrs. Darrell very unhappy. She idolizes her son, who is an only child, and was terribly spoiled when he was a boy, they say; and she does not know whether he will be a rich man or a pauper.”
“And in the meantime, Mr. Darrell is in India?”
“Yes. He went to India three years ago. He’s overseer to an indigo-planter up the country, at some place with an unpronounceable name, hundreds and hundreds of miles from Calcutta. He’s not at all happy, I believe, and he very seldom writes—not above once in a twelvemonth.”
“He is not a good son, then,” Eleanor said. ”

“ There was silence for some minutes, and then Sir Vane asked:
"Tell me, Pauline—do you think that Lady Darrell would marry him if she knew what you have just told me?"
"I am sure she would not. She is very worldly, and only lives what one may call a life of appearances; she would not marry him if she knew him to be a thief—she would shrink from him. Elegant, polished, amiable women like Lady Darrell are frightened at crime." ”

“ You cannot imagine the power she has over him. And we shall have to begin the old false life over again, she and I—disliking and distrusting each other in our hearts—the daily round of civilities and ceremonies and pretences. O Mary, you cannot think how I hate it.'
We had seen nothing of Julian Stormont during all the time of our happy solitude; but on the day appointed for Mr. and Mrs. Darrell's return he came to Thornleigh, looking more careworn than ever. ”

“ And, though every muscle was tensed with horror at the touch of the thing, not a tremor showed in his impassive face.
A man stepped forward and thrust the cord through the hole with deft fingers. The silky thing slid loosely across the secret-service agent's throat, feeling to his raw, quivering nerves like the touch of a snake. For a second it dangled there, and then began slowly to tighten. Darrell's eyes were fixed on the smooth water of the bay, rippling in the morning sun. In another moment the whole picture would vanish. ”

“ Arabella was startled by the intellect and character of Darrell into that kind of homage which a woman, who has hitherto met but her own intellectual inferiors, renders to the first distinguished personage in whom she recognises, half with humility and half with awe, an understanding and a culture to which her own reason is but the flimsy glass-house, and her own knowledge but the forced exotic. ”

“ A little later, as Darrell in the early twilight passed up the driveway to The Pines, he was conscious only of a dull, leaden weight within his breast; his very senses seemed benumbed and he almost believed himself incapable of further suffering, till, as he approached the house, the sight of Kate seated in the veranda with her father and aunt and the thought of the suffering yet in store for her thrilled him anew with most poignant pain. ”

“ For here it was not Darrell’s taste that was delighted; it was Darrell’s heart that, ever hungry, had found food. His heart was connecting those long-neglected memorials of an ambition baffled and relinquished—here with a nation, there with his father’s grave! How his eyes sparkled! how his lip smiled! Nobody would have guessed it—none of us know each other; least of all do we know the interior being of those whom we estimate by public repute;—but what a world of simple, fond affection lay coiled and wasted in that proud man’s solitary breast! ”

“ But what was the remembrance or the grief, Alban Morley, who knew everything, was quite persuaded that Darrell would never suffer him to know. Could it be in any way connected with those three young ladies to whom Darrell’s attentions had been so perversely impartial? The Colonel did not fail to observe that to those young ladies Darrell’s letter made no allusion. Was it not possible that he had really felt for one of them a deeper sentiment than a man advanced in years ever likes to own even to his nearest friend—hazarded a proposal, and met with a rebuff? ”

“ Upon one of these half-holidays, when midsummer was near at hand, we were interrupted by an unwonted event, in the shape of a visit from a cousin of Milly's; a young man who occupied an important position in her father's house of business, and of whom she had sometimes talked to me, but not much. His name was Julian Stormont, and he was the only son of Mr. Darrell's only sister, long since dead. ”

“ Egerton, with a sneer.
'O God, how cruel a man can to be a woman he has once loved!' cried Mrs. Darrell passionately. 'Yes, I did marry a rich man, Angus; but I never schemed or tried to win him. The chance came to me without a hope or a thought of mine. It was the chance of rescue from the dreariest life of drudgery that a poor dependent creature ever lived, and I took it. But I have never forgotten you, Angus Egerton, not for one hour of my life.'
'I am sorry you should have taken the trouble to remember me,' he answered very coldly. ”

“ HONORIA.—"Is Mr. Darrell so fond of music, then?"
COLONEL MORLEY.—"One would not have thought it. He keeps a secretary at Fawley who plays the flute. There's something very interesting about Darrell. I wish you could hear his ideas on marriage and domestic life: more freshness of heart than in the young men one meets nowadays. It may be prejudice; but it seems to me that the young fellows of the present race, if more sober and staid than we were, are sadly wanting in character and spirit,—no warm blood in their veins. ”

“ Who need ever know that George Darrell, digger, of Red Shirt Rush, Vaal River, was the same man as Darrell of the Lancers, who like a fool made his good old name shameful by giving it to the woman he had married. He cursed his folly as he remembered himself little more than a boy marrying a woman years older than himself, who, wild as he was then, was as much his inferior morally as she was socially. ”

“ She doubted if she could ever endure the place now, she said. She is not like me, Mary. I shall always have a melancholy love for the house in which I have lived so happily with my father.'
So I remained with my dear girl, and life at Thornleigh Manor glided by in a quiet melancholy fashion. If Mrs. Darrell grieved for her dead husband, her sorrow was of a cold tearless kind; but she kept her own rooms a good deal, and we did not see much of her. The Collingwoods were full of sympathy for their 'darling Milly,' and their affection had some cheering influence upon her mind. ”

“ Serena returned within a [325] half-hour, with a note from Baskerville saying he would be pleased to call to see Mrs. Darrell that evening at half-past nine o’clock.
General Brandon having been made comfortable for the night, Elizabeth descended to the drawing-room. The gas was lighted, but turned low. Elizabeth went to the window, whence she could see the Clavering house blazing with light and an army of liveried servants moving to and fro. A fraction of the cost of that one entertainment would have made her a free woman. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She found herself whirling around the room in Darrell’s arms. For a wonder, although an Englishman, he knew how to dance, and Elizabeth was [19] intensely susceptible to rhythm and music. She felt when she began to waltz with Darrell, as if she would like to waltz forever with him. He was so strong, so supple, so graceful,—so susceptible, like herself, to that charm of dance music in which two people dancing together are conscious of that sensuous counterpart of real love which makes a man and a woman feel as if they constituted one being with a single heart and a single soul. ”

“ I am not Mr. Darrell’s son—the transmitter of his line. I believe yet that he will form new ties. By my mother’s side I have no ancestors to boast of; and you have owned to me that Sophy’s mother was of gentle birth. Alban Morley told me, when I last saw him, that Darrell wishes me to marry, and leaves me free to choose my bride. Yes; I have no doubt of Mr. Darrell’s consent. My dear mother will welcome to her heart the prize so coveted by mine; and Charles Haughton’s son will have a place at his hearth for the old age of William Losely. ”