Richard Blackmore - Dariel - A Romance of Surrey

"What I mean has nothing to do with your ideas," he continued as if all my ideas must be wrong, just when I was hoping that he began to see the right; "for Constitutional questions, I don't care twopence. It has become a race of roguery between both sides. Don't look savage, George, you know it as well as I do. Your party would do anything to get into power again. When the bone is in their own mouths, will they even try to crack it? But I have not come to talk all that stuff. I am under your directions in a matter nearer home. Are you going to play fast and loose with me, while your sister is being truckled away to an idiot of an Earl?"

If my mind had not been very equable and just, I must have had a quarrel with him over this. And if he had looked at me with any defiance – but his gaze was very sorrowful, as if all his hopes were blasted.

"Jackson," I answered in a rather solemn voice, having sense of my own tribulation, and I saw that he liked me to address him thus, though the name is not purely romantic, "you are not a bit worse off than any other fellow. Do you suppose that nobody has ever been in love before? You look at things from such a narrow point of view. Consider how much worse it must be for a woman."

"Well, I wish it was." His reply upset my arguments; I found it very difficult to re-arrange them on that basis.

"So far as that goes, I can get on well enough," he proceeded as I looked at him sensibly; "I shall feel it for years, no doubt, but still – but still the blackness and the bitterness of it is this, that such a girl, such a girl as never before trod the face of the earth, or inhaled the light of the sun – " "Don't get mixed," I implored, but he regarded me with scorn – "should be sold, I say sold, like a lamb in the market, to an idiot, just because he has a title!"

"You will be sorry when you have offended me," I spoke with extraordinary self-control, taking a side glance at my own case; "for I don't come round in a hurry, I can tell you. But you really don't know what you are talking of. My father and mother have heard of no proposal, neither have I. And as for Grace herself, she despises that milksop as heartily as I do."

"George Cranleigh, I have not known you long; but this I can say without hesitation, and I should like to see any man deny it, you are the very noblest fellow that ever – "

"Trod the face of the earth, or inhaled the light of the sun. And why? Because I happen to agree with you. Ah, Jackson, allow me to improve the moment. Is there any human praise that does not flow from the like source, from the sense that the other fellow thinks as we do, and the subtle flattery of our own wisdom, and concurrence with our wishes."

"Shut up," he cried with a smile, which must have procured him much lucrative business in the City; "what has Farmer Jarge to do with moralising? But are you quite sure of what you said – that she despises him heartily?"

"Unless anybody runs him down, she never has a good word to say for him. He will be here upon some pretext or another; but you need have no fear. I see exactly how to treat the case – to praise him to the nines, and exalt him as the paragon of all manliness, and self-denial, and every tip-top element. And then to let her observe him closely, to see if he comes up to that mark – and behold she finds him a selfish little funk! That is the true policy with women, Jackson Stoneman."

The stock-broker looked at me, with puzzle in his eyes, which were ever so much keener than mine, and had a gift of creating a gable over them, like a pair of dormer-windows with the frames painted black.

"Bless my soul, if you wouldn't do up our way!" he said; and what higher praise could be given to a man? "Friend George, you are a thousand times sharper than I thought. But all I wish is fair play, and no favour; except of course favour in a certain pair of eyes."

"You shall have it, my dear fellow, you shall have it. If only you will keep yourself in the background, and do the most benevolent things you can think of, without letting anybody know it. Your money is the main point against you with her. Could you manage anyhow to be bankrupt?"

"That comes to most of us in the end," he replied, with a sigh, which I did not like at all, but hoped that it was rather of the heart than pocket; "if that were so, George, would you still take my part?"

"Not unless my sister were really committed. But if she had set her heart upon you, Stoneman, your wealth or your poverty would make no difference to me; and I am sure that it would make none to her."

"What more could a man wish? And I am sure you mean it. Come what will, I will play my game in an open and straightforward way. We must never try any tricks with women, George. Bless them, they know us better than we know ourselves. Perhaps because they pay so much more attention to the subject."

If any one has followed my little adventures only half as carefully as I have tried to tell them, he will see that the time had now come and gone, for my second visit to St. Winifred's, otherwise Little Guinib. And I would have set forth what happened then, if it had been worth mentioning. But except for the medical treatment received, I might just as well have stayed away, for I never got a glimpse of Dariel; and her father was in such a sad state of mind, that he scarcely cared to speak at all. Being a most kind and courteous gentleman, he begged me to make due allowance for him, for this was the anniversary of the most unhappy day of his life, and in truth it would have been better for him, if he had died before he saw that day. One of the worst things of being a gentleman, or of having high-culture like Miss Ticknor, is that you must not ask questions, or even hint at your desire to know more, but sit upon the edge of curiosity in silence, although it may be cutting you like hoop-iron on the top-rail. And this feeling was not by any means allayed, when I saw the great henchman Stepan in the court hanging his head, and without his red cross; and when with the tender of five shillings' worth of sympathy, I ventured to ask him to explain his woe, his only answer was – "Me no can."

But when another week had passed, and my next visit became due, the hills, and the valley, and everything else had put on a different complexion. It was not like a sunset when the year is growing old; but as lively and lovely as a morning of the May, when all the earth is clad in fresh apparel, and all the air is full of smiling glances at it. There came to my perception such a bright wink from the west, and so many touches, on the high ground and the low, of the encouragement of heaven to whatsoever thing looks up at it, that in my heart there must have been a sense it had no words for – a forecast of its own perhaps that it was going to be pleased, far beyond the pleasure of the eyes and mind. And in that prophecy it hit the mark, for who should meet me at a winding of the path, but Dariel herself, no other? Dariel, my darling!

As yet she knew not – and I shivered with the thought that she might never care to know – in what lowly but holy shrine she was for ever paramount. But a little blush, such as a white rose might feel at the mark H. C. in an exhibition, answered my admiring gaze; and then I was nowhere in the splendour of her eyes – nowhere, except for being altogether there.

But with no such disturbance was her mind astray. Alas, it was "all there," as sharp as the wits of the last man who wanted to sell me a horse. And she did not want to sell me anything; only to keep her precious value to herself. What a shame it is to leave things so that a poor fellow never knows how to begin! But that was not her meaning. In all her lovely life, she never meant anything that was not kind.

"I am not quite assured," she began, after waiting for me to speak, – as if I could, with the tongue in such a turbulence of eyes and heart! – "it is beyond my knowledge of English society, Mr. Cran-lee, to be confident that I am taking the correct step, in advancing in this manner to declare to you the things that have come into my thoughts. But if I have done wrong, you will pardon me, I hope, because I am so anxious about very dismal things."