LITMIR.BIZ

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painted well for a youthful amateur, listened with great delight.

      “Surely, sir,” said he, struck much with a very subtile observation upon the causes why the Italian masters admit of copyists with greater facility than the Flemish,—“surely, sir, you yourself must have practised the art of painting?”

      “Not I; but I instructed myself as a judge of pictures, because at one time I was a collector.”

      Fairthorn, speaking for the first time: “The rarest collection,—such Albert Durers! such Holbeins! and that head by Leonardo da Vinci!” He stopped; looked extremely frightened; helped himself to the port, turning his back upon his host, to hold, as usual, the glass to the light.

      “Are they here, sir?” asked Lionel.

      Darrell’s face darkened, and he made no answer; but his head sank on his breast, and he seemed suddenly absorbed in gloomy thought. Lionel felt that he had touched a wrong chord, and glanced timidly towards Fairthorn; but that gentleman cautiously held up his finger, and then rapidly put it to his lip, and as rapidly drew it away. After that signal the boy did not dare to break the silence, which now lasted uninterruptedly till Darrell rose, and with the formal and superfluous question, “Any more wine?” led the way back to the library. There he ensconced himself in an easy-chair, and saying, “Will you find a book for yourself, Lionel?” took a volume at random from the nearest shelf, and soon seemed absorbed in its contents. The room, made irregular by baywindows, and shelves that projected as in public libraries, abounded with nook and recess. To one of these Fairthorn sidled himself, and became invisible. Lionel looked round the shelves. No belles lettres of our immediate generation were found there; none of those authors most in request in circulating libraries and literary institutes. The shelves disclosed no poets, no essayists, no novelists, more recent than the Johnsonian age. Neither in the lawyer’s library were to be found any law books; no, nor the pamphlets and parliamentary volumes that should have spoken of the once eager politician. But there were superb copies of the ancient classics. French and Italian authors were not wanting, nor such of the English as have withstood the test of time. The larger portions of the shelves seemed, however, devoted to philosophical works. Here alone was novelty admitted, the newest essays on science, or the best editions of old works thereon. Lionel at length made his choice,—a volume of the “Faerie Queene.” Coffee was served; at a later hour tea. The clock struck ten. Darrell laid down his book.

      “Mr. Fairthorn, the flute!”

      From the recess a mutter; and presently—the musician remaining still hidden—there came forth the sweetest note,—so dulcet, so plaintive! Lionel’s ear was ravished. The music suited well with the enchanted page through which his fancy had been wandering dreamlike,—the flute with the “Faerie Queene.” As the air flowed liquid on, Lionel’s eyes filled with tears. He did not observe that Darrell was intently watching him. When the music stopped, he turned aside to wipe the tears from his eyes. Somehow or other, what with the poem, what with the flute, his thoughts had wandered far, far hence to the green banks and blue waves of the Thames,—to Sophy’s charming face, to her parting childish gift! And where was she now? Whither passing away, after so brief a holiday, into the shadows of forlorn life? Darrell’s bell-like voice smote his ear.

      “Spenser; you love him! Do you write poetry?” “No, sir: I only feel it!”

      “Do neither!” said the host, abruptly. Then, turning away, he lighted his candle, murmured a quick good-night, and disappeared through a side-door which led to his own rooms.

      Lionel looked round for Fairthorn, who now emerged ab anqulo from his nook.

      “Oh, Mr. Fairthorn, how you have enchanted me! I never believed the flute could have been capable of such effects!”

      Mr. Fairthorn’s grotesque face lighted up. He took off his spectacles, as if the better to contemplate the face of his eulogist. “So you were pleased! really?” he said, chuckling a strange, grim chuckle, deep in his inmost self.

      “Pleased! it is a cold word! Who would not be more than pleased?”

      “You should hear me in the open air.”

      “Let me do so-to-morrow.”

      “My dear young sir, with all my heart. Hist!”—gazing round as if haunted,—“I like you. I wish him to like you. Answer all his questions as if you did not care how he turned you inside out. Never ask him a question, as if you sought to know what he did not himself confide. So there is some thing, you think, in a flute, after all? There are people who prefer the fiddle.”

      “Then they never heard your flute, Mr. Fairthorn.” The musician again emitted his discordant chuckle, and, nodding his head nervously and cordially, shambled away without lighting a candle, and was engulfed in the shadows of some mysterious corner.

      CHAPTER IV

      The old world and the new.

      It was long before Lionel could sleep. What with the strange house and the strange master, what with the magic flute and the musician’s admonitory caution, what with tender and regretful reminiscences of Sophy, his brain had enough to work on. When he slept at last, his slumber was deep and heavy, and he did not wake till gently shaken by the well-bred arm of Mr. Mills. “I humbly beg pardon: nine o’clock, sir, and the breakfast-bell going to ring.” Lionel’s toilet was soon hurried over; Mr. Darrell and Fairthorn were talking together as he entered the breakfast-room,—the same room as that in which they had dined.

      “Good morning, Lionel,” said the host. “No leave-taking to-day, as you threatened. I find you have made an appointment with Mr. Fairthorn, and I shall place you under his care. You may like to look over the old house, and make yourself”—Darrell paused “at home,” jerked out Mr. Fairthorn, filling up the hiatus. Darrell turned his eye towards the speaker, who evidently became much frightened, and, after looking in vain for a corner, sidled away to the window and poked himself behind the curtain. “Mr. Fairthorn, in the capacity of my secretary, has learned to find me thoughts, and put them in his own words,” said Darrell, with a coldness almost icy. He then seated himself at the breakfast-table; Lionel followed his example, and Mr. Fairthorn, courageously emerging, also took a chair and a roll. “You are a true diviner, Mr. Darrell,” said Lionel; “it is a glorious day.”

      “But there will be showers later. The fish are at play on the surface of the lake,” Darrell added, with a softened glance towards Fairthorn, who was looking the picture of misery. “After twelve, it will be just the weather for trout to rise; and if you fish, Mr. Fairthorn will lend you a rod. He is a worthy successor of Izaak Walton, and loves a companion as Izaak did, but more rarely gets one.”

      “Are there trout in your lake, sir?”

      “The lake! You must not dream of invading that sacred water. The inhabitants of rivulets and brooks not within my boundary are beyond the pale of Fawley civilization, to be snared and slaughtered like Caifres, red men, or any other savages, for whom we bait with a missionary and whom we impale on a bayonet. But I regard my lake as a politic community, under the protection of the law, and leave its denizens to devour each other, as Europeans, fishes, and other cold-blooded creatures wisely do, in order to check the overgrowth of population. To fatten one pike it takes a great many minnows. Naturally I support the vested rights of pike. I have been a lawyer.”

      It would be in vain to describe the manner in which Mr. Darrell vented this or similar remarks of mocking irony or sarcastic spleen. It was not bitter nor sneering, but in his usual mellifluous level tone and passionless tranquillity.

      The breakfast was just over as a groom passed in front of the windows with a led horse. “I am going to leave you, Lionel,” said the host, “to make—friends with Mr. Fairthorn, and I thus complete, according to my own original intention, the sentence which he diverted astray.” He passed across the hall to the open house-door, and stood by the horse, stroking its neck and giving some directions to the groom. Lionel and Fairthorn followed to the threshold,

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