never have been born to it! You look away:
I offend you! I have no right to tax your benevolence
for others; but, instead of showering favours upon
me, so little would suffice for her!—if
she were but above positive want, with that old man
(she would not be happy without him), safe in such
a cottage as you give to your own peasants!
I am a man, or shall be one soon; I can wrestle with
the world, and force my way somehow; but that delicate
child, a village show, or a beggar on the high road!—no
mother, no brother, no one but that broken-down cripple,
leaning upon her arm as his crutch. I cannot
bear to think of it. I am sure I shall meet her
again somewhere; and when I do, may I not write to
you, and will you not come to her help? Do speak;
do say ‘Yes,’ Mr. Darrell.”
The rich man’s breast heaved slightly; he closed
his eyes, but for a moment. There was a short
and sharp struggle with his better self, and the better
self conquered.
“Let go my reins; see, my horse puts down his
ears; he may do you a mischief. Now canter on:
you shall be satisfied. Give me a moment to
—to unbutton my coat: it is too tight
for me.”
Guy Darrell gives way
to an impulse, and quickly decides what he
will do with it.
“Lionel Haughton,” said Guy Darrell, regaining
his young cousin’s side, and speaking in a firm
and measured voice, “I have to thank you for
one very happy minute; the sight of a heart so fresh
in the limpid purity of goodness is a luxury you cannot
comprehend till you have come to my age; journeyed,
like me, from Dan to Beersheba, and found all barren.
Heed me: if you had been half-a-dozen years
older, and this child for whom you plead had been
a fair young woman, perhaps just as innocent, just
as charming,—more in peril,—my
benevolence would have lain as dormant as a stone.
A young man’s foolish sentiment for a pretty
girl,—as your true friend, I should have
shrugged my shoulders and said, ‘Beware!’
Had I been your father, I should have taken alarm
and frowned. I should have seen the sickly romance
which ends in dupes and deceivers. But at your
age, you, hearty, genial, and open-hearted boy,—you,
caught but by the chivalrous compassion for helpless
female childhood,—oh, that you were my
son,—oh, that my dear father’s blood
were in those knightly veins! I had a son once!
God took him;” the strong man’s lips quivered:
he hurried on. “I felt there was manhood
in you, when you wrote to fling my churlish favours
in my teeth; when you would have left my roof-tree
in a burst of passion which might be foolish, but
was nobler than the wisdom of calculating submission,
manhood, but only perhaps man’s pride as man,
—man’s heart not less cold than winter.
To-day you have shown me something far better than
pride; that nature which constitutes the heroic temperament
is completed by two attributes,—unflinching
