Darell Blake. A study. (Fifth thousand.)

Front matter

DARELL BLAKE. FIFTH THOUSAND. DARELL BLARE. H 5tub£. BY LADY COLIN CAMPBELL. " Qui dit vanite, dit toujours cruaute ! " (Physiologic de V Amour Moderne— Meditation XIY.) P. BOURGET. : TRISCHLEE AND COMPANY 18, NEW BRIDGE STREET, E.C., Late HANSOM CAB PUBLISHING COMPANY. AU Sights Reserved. TO MY INEXORABLE CRITIC. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. fTOPO ; or, Summer Life in Italy. By G. E. * Brunefille (Lady Colin Campbell). Illustrated by Kate Greenaway. Marcus Ward and Co., London. "We are much mistaken if ' Topo ' fail to secure the joyonsest of welcomes from the wondering worshippers of Sauta Claus." — Sporting and Dramatic News. "Gems of price are often found deep down under the earth's surface, and the searcher is not rewarded until just on the point of giving up in despair. In the same way the huge pile of ChriBtmas literature which has come under our notice this year concealed beneath its mass the most charming volume of all. l Topo ' is a delightful little pickle of a girl, who, with her madcap brother Principe, is perpetually getting into scrapes, much to the alarm of their sedate sister Ria.

The author deserves great credit for the distinctness with which the individualities of the three children are kept to the end. Each says and does the very thing that might be safely predicted of the child under the circumstances, and their chatter has all the vraisemblance that Mr. Lewis Carroll gives to the talk of his heroines." — The Globe, December 22, 1877. A BOOK OF THE RUNNING BROOK, ** and of Still "Waters. By Lady Colin Campbell. Sampson Low, Marston, and Co., 1886. "The essays which we propose to notice in their collective form made their appearance singly in the Saturday Review, and this, we need hardly eay, is in itself no light warranty of merit But it was not till their repnblication as a series that we became fully alive to their merits. Taken together they furnish a well-drawn, though concise, brief for the advocate of pisciculture in its most neglected form."— The Fishing Gazette, Oct. 1G 1886.

" . . . . Lady Colin's book is very well written indeed, and is made additionally interesting by pleasant disquisitions upon the literature and natural history of its subject."— The County Gentleman, January 1, 1887. " Lady Colin Campbell's book fully realises the alluring promise of its title Anglers and meditative folk, whether 'seated in hearing of a hundred streams,' or surrounded by books and the trophies of the rod, will respond to the enthusiasm, the sympathetic descriptive power and sensitive insight of these delightful studies of nature."— The Satruday Revitw, July 31, 1886. '■ This dainty little volume might be fitly characterised by reversing the terms of Johnson's famous criticism. It is well-printed, well-bound well arranged, and well-written."— St. James' Gazette, August 23 1886 Lady Cohn Campbell has been happily inspired in contributing her quota to the literature of pisciculture This excellent little work offers curious and pleasant reading."— The Morning Post, August 4, 1886 Voiia un des plus jobs et des plus rares livres qu'ait inspires en tout pays 1 amour de la peehe et de la peche a la ligne.

Chapter I. Darell Blake

talked home slowly and thoughtfully that afternoon from the office of the Middleborough Herald. He had preferred to walk instead of taking a hansom, for he wanted to have some time to himself to think over the possibilities opened up to his mental vision by one of the letters he had found awaiting him on the table of his private room. The day was not so far distant behind him when to possess that private room, and to sit in that editorial chair, had seemed the summit of his ambition ; but to one of Darell Blake's calibre, the summit of ambition is never attained, for there is always a greater height in front yet to climb, and Death alone "gives pause" to the restless ness that drives such natures as his. The son of a small country solicitor, he had soon abjured the pursuit of law and turned his atten tion and his energies to journalism.

Gifted with a brilliancy which he probably owed in no small measure to his Irish descent (for there never was a Blake yet who did not claim kinship with those of Galway1), he had not been long in making his mark, and having once got his foot on the ladder, he had mounted rung by rung until, little more than three years before, he had been appointed to the post of editor of the Middleborough Herald, a large provincial sheet of considerable political influence. The talents which had successfully obtained him this coveted post had been many and varied, not the least of their number being those whereby he had, some time before his appointment, gained the approbation and affec tions of Miss Tidmarsh, the daughter of the pro prietor of the paper. Miss Tidmarsh was fully aware at the time of the fact that she was committing a mesalliance; she had been too strictly brought up to worship the great ness of the Tidmarshes to allow for a moment that Darell Blake, journalist and son of a small solicitor, was her social equal.

But many women find a considerable secret satisfaction in playing Queen Cophetua ; besides, Darell Blake with his close-cropped black head, his keen iron-grey eyes and square chin, his intense determination to con quer Fame and Fortune somehow, his ready tongue and keen intellect, was so entirely unlike the small country squires, the stolid merchants, or the bored and listless officers of the various line regiments usually quartered at Middleborough, that she shut her eyes to all other considerations, and announced to her dismayed parents her intention of marrying Darell and no other. That Mr. and Mrs. Tidmarsh were aghast at such an idea is not to be wondered at. Though the paper from which they drew a considerable part of their income was a Liberal organ with strong leanings towards Radicalism, no one could be more intensely Conservative than this excellent pair.

Universal Brotherhood, the Rights of the People, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, were all admirable expressions wherewith to conjure and increase circulation. But to suggest a practical exposition of such theories, not at the office of the Middle borough Herald, but at the imposing red-brick mansion of Mr. Tidmarsh, would have cast a distinct gloom over that worthy and his family. They would have unanimously voted such ideas as being in the worst possible taste. The social aspirations of the family were upward ; they were infinitely more concerned to raise themselves in the scale than to raise others, and the fulmina tions in the family paper against the House of Lords were tacitly labelled " for external use only." When Mr. Tidmarsh introduced Darell Blake to his wife and family, and, in a burst of enthusiasm over some particularly brilliant leader which that young man had written, and which had attracted a good deal of notice, invited him to dinner, he had not the faintest premonition of what would be the result of such a step.

Neither he nor his wife saw anything more in Darell than that he was a " clever young fellow," as they remarked to each other with a feeling of liberal condescension, as they would say of a groom that he had good hands, or of a gardener that he understood grapes and orchids. In that extraordinarily com placent yet one-sided self-satisfaction which is so characteristic of nearly all classes of English society, it never occurred to them to imagine that any one in Darell Blake's position would dare to raise his eyes with aught but awe to the Tidmarsh family and its august members. Brains were good, but money was better, and birth was best ; and the Tidmarshes, who possessed the second, and worshipped the third, were disposed to think but little, if they condescended to think at all, of Darell Blake, who was endowed with naught but brains in plenty.

As to Darell himself, it was with no arrierc pense'e in his mind that he made himself agreeable to Mrs. Tidmarsh and her daughter. In the duel a outrance which this young fellow had taken upon himself with Dame Fortune, women did not enter into his calculations. To him, full of restless, tormenting ambition, and burning impatience to enter into the great arena of life and politics, the primrose path of dalliance had absolutely no attraction, and when his companion journalists, or other young men about the town, would occasionally drag him off to a supper-party in honour of some divinities of the theatre or circus, he would usually break away from the festivities, disgusted and impatient with the stupidity of the whole affair. It was this stupidity and inaneness which displeased him more than anything else.

That men, before whom life was opening out, with all its bewildering possibilities of power and satisfied ambition, should care to stop by the way for no better attraction than a canary-coloured head, was a thing he could not understand. He felt like a young conscript on a mountain-side, looking over a fair and fertile plain from which uprose the turmoil of battle and the clash of arms; and while he was full of eager, burning impatience to join in the fight, he found his companions sleeping by the wine-skins they had emptied. " Queer fellow ! Blake," was the usual comment of the young men of his age. This would probably have received unflattering additions, but they were precluded from calling him a milksop by the fact that he distanced them all when it came to a question of athletics. These Darell looked upon as a necessary part of his training, and in them he found a safety-valve for the turbulent life and activity which bubbled up within him, and which were only to be brought into subjection to the sedentariness of a journalist's life by strenuous force of will.

He had been pleased by Mr. Tidmarsh's invitation to dinner. It had seemed to him a beginning of that recognition of his talents (Darell was by no means blindly modest to his own attainments) which he meant to wrest from the world at large. He had a curious charm of manner, a deferring courtesy towards women which came partly from his want of experience with the sex in reality, and partly from his immense experience of them in the books of bygone generations. The only women he knew anything about were the Celias and Julias of the days of Ben Jonson and Herrick; and there was in his manner to women a certain old fashioned distance and courtesy which, combined with his Irish fluency and gift of language, had a quaint foreign sort of quality full of charm to women accustomed to the " hail-fellow-well-met " style of the present day.

This manner was not without its effect on both Mrs. Tidmarsh and her daughter. " Quite a nice young fellow, with such quiet and respectful manners," pronounced Mrs. Tidmarsh to her lord, in the privacy of the con jugal chamber, after Darell's first dinner at the red-brick mansion, " and seems to know a wonder ful deal about everything." What Miss Tidmarsh's opinion was, is not known, but she put on a superabundance of silver ornaments when Darell, in response to an invitation made on the occasion of the dinner, came to lunch a few days after. It was not part of Darell's creed that women were possessed of brains. He knew little about them, cared less, and looked upon them as a part of the economy of the world, into whose actual utility he had neither time nor inclination to inquire. But all the same the vanity which he had in common with the rest of his sex, was gratified when Miss Tidmarsh, one of the acknow ledged Middleborough belles, asked his advice about the books she should read, and when she would invite him, giving a book into his hands with much jingling of bangles and rustling of skirts, to explain or expound some passage to her.

(She actually plunged into the works of the great John Stuart Mill in her efforts to gain an inkling of political economy, and above all into the Radical tenets, on which Darell would hold forth with such irresistible eloquence; and she tried, as is the way with many women when they are in love with a clever man, to repeat his utterances with a parrot-like precision which should have gone far to open her good mother's eyes to the true state of things. It is impossible to say how long matters might have continued on this footing. Darell came frequently to the house of the Tidmarshes, wel comed there both by the father and mother, whose dinner-parties had gradually assumed quite another character since Darell had become one of the usual guests. Instead of the sober, dull reunions of town and country magnates, where the small local gossip was exchanged, the conversation now took a veiy different turn.

Political discussions became frequent, questions of all kinds were argued freely, and under the encouraging and fostering influence of Darell Blake's ready tongue and keen, trenchant intellect, the middle-aged and elderly magnates woke up to the fact that they really had opinions, or that, if not, it was worth while listening to this brilliant young speaker and learning from him what were the questions of the day. Mr. and Mrs. Tidmarsh were not slow to perceive the difference in their parties, and though somewhat bewildered at times by the nature of the discussions that arose, and into which it was ARELL BLAKE. Darell's delight to draw everybody at table, still they were able to appreciate the change for the better. They not only gloried in it, but took the credit upon themselves complacently, much as if they had engaged some first-class musician for the entertainment of their guests.

Darell Blake per se remained in thenestimation at the same point of condescending appreciation to which he had attained on the occasion of his first visit. As I said before, things might have gone on indefinitely on this footing, had it not been for Henry Burnside, an old gentleman who had been a warm friend and patron of Darell's father, and who, in spite of advancing years and gout, had a clearer vision, mental and physical, than most people. Darell was a great favourite of his, though they held diametrically opposite opinions in politics. But Mr. Burnside, like many another strong and elderly Tory, had begun life as a member of the Reform Club, and, from the vantage-ground of his age and experience, was disposed to be lenient towards Darell's pronounced Radicalism. "Let the lad cut his teeth," he would say when Darell's father had been shocked to the innermost recesses of his Conservative respectability and veneration of the powers that be, by some torrent of denunciation on the horrors of landlordism from Darell's lips, "let the lad B alone.

He'll get over it, like the measles or the mumps, and grow out of it as he gets older." Mr. Burnside was not long in seeing how matters stood, on Miss Tidmarsh's side at least ; a discovery which overjoyed him for the sake of his favourite. He knew the latter too well to utter anything that savoured of sentiment, but he knew equally well how to bait the hook of Darell's restless ambition to get a footing in the world of action. Disregarding Darell's impatient scorn of the idea that a woman could be of any use to him, he quietly explained the advantages that would accrue from a marriage of the kind — how, with the local influence of the wealthy Tidmarshes to back him up, and — who knows? — perhaps the editorship itself of the Middleborough Herald, there was no saying where he could climb, once he had got his foot so surely on the ladder.

Then having painted the bright side of the picture in the most glowing colours, he administered a judicious amount of cold water by speaking of the certain opposition of the Tidmarsh pere et mire. Opposition was even as the breath of his nostrils to Darell Blake, and it was the only thing needed to make the picture Mr. Burnside depicted of a possible future, doubly attractive. Besides, in his way, he admired Miss Tidmarsh ; her fair large face, with its regular features and rather prominent pale blue eyes, was handsome in its stolid provincial way ; and her love of brilliant-coloured satins and plushes, and multitudinous necklaces and bangles, was in no way a drawback. If he had paused to think about it, he would probably have considered that all these things gave her an imposing and impressive sense of wealth and luxury, which was an appropriate setting for the daughter of the wealthy and important Mr. Tidmarsh.

Darell Blake was not a man to let the grass grow under his feet when once he had made up his mind to a certain course of action. Whether he had kissed the Blarney Stone is not recorded in history, but if one were to judge by the rapidity with which he brought his courtship of Victoria Tidmarsh to a successful conclusion, one might suppose that that mystic oscillatory rite had been performed. The violent opposition of the parents of his fiancde only acted as an incentive; he took an almost keener pleasure in winning them over than he had taken in winning their daughter. Between the fair Victoria's stolid determination and Darell's brilliant pleadings, the old couple had perforce to give way ; and once they consented to his being their son-in-law, thenone idea was to find him a post which would make the misalliance less patent to the world at large.

Mr. Bumside's prophecy proved as true as most of the utterances that fell from that astute old gentleman's lips ; and it was not long after Darell's marriage to Victoria that he found himself installed in that editorial sanctum which had seemed to him, in his younger days, as being something akin in glory to an official residence in Downing Street. Now, an editor of a large provincial paper may be an important local personage, but an editor who is son-in-law to the proprietor of the paper is considerably more so, and when to these advantages were added Darell's brilliant pen and admirable tact and judgment, it is not to be wondered at that those people who had turned up their eyes in astonishment and horror at " Tidmarsh throwing away his girl " on a com paratively unknown journalist, now began to suspect that he had been considerably cleverer than they had imagined.

It became the fashion of the local wiseacres to prophesy that Darell would be " somebody one of these days," a vaguely mystic utterance which reflected credit on the acumen of its utterer, and yet pledged him to nothing definite. Darell's eloquent tongue as well as pen, his power of not only hitting the right nail on the head, but of hitting it hard, so as to drive it home once for all into the memory of his hearers or readers, soon brought him into prominence. His father-in-law, who had at first supported him with his influence, on the principle of making the best of a bad bargain, now felt a glow of pride when he found Darell's words quoted with enthusiasm by the men who had been coolest in their perfunctory congratulations at the time of his daughter's marriage. All this and much more came floating on the surface of Darell's thoughts as he walked home slowly from his office through the dim October evening.

The street was a long one. Down the centre ran the tram-car rails, and from the far end of the street, between the lessening lines of lamps that dotted the perspective like jewels, the tinkling of the car bell could be heard, the horse's hoofs sounding strangely loud in the evening hush, as the great car swept silently by on its smooth rails. There were but few people about, for it was after the hour when the ordinary business offices closed, and the clerks working therein had all gone home, or to other and gayer parts of the town. A frosty fog filled the air ; a bluish haze had crept up and obscured the crimson glories of the setting sun, and there was a nip in the air that made most passers-by disinclined to loiter. Darell, however, did not hurry. He had been so busy all day, seeing people on business matters of all kinds, that he had had no time to himself to think over the letter which now filled his brain with the possibilities it opened up to his quick imagination.

The letter contained an offer of the post of editor of a great London daily, brought about by the efforts of one of the proprietors, Mr. Sedley, M.P., who had made Darell's acquaintance when on a political campaign the previous autumn. The campaign comprising political meetings not only at Middleborough, but at other large neighbouring towns, at nearly all of which Darell Blake had been called upon to speak, Mr. Sedley had been considerably struck with his eloquence and mental grasp of most subjects. When the meetings at Middleborough took place, he had accepted Blake's invitation to stay with him for the three days ; and, having studied his host at close quarters, he had said to himself that such talents as Darell possessed would be invaluable to the Radical cause, and that he ought to be given the necessary opportunities to make his mark elsewhere than in a provincial town, no matter how great and locally important the provincial town might happen to be.

He had mentioned Darell to his co-pro prietors of the Tribune, and also to various members of his party, and when about a year later the then editor resigned on account of an increase of ill-health from which he had long suffered, Sedley encountered comparatively little opposition when he suggested offering the vacant post to his protege. It was not uncertainty as to his possible action with regard to such an offer that made Darell linger on his homeward way. Uncertainty was a state of mind to which he was an absolute stranger. Nobody who looked at the man's square, low forehead, and equally square chin, could asso ciate such a physiognomy with any idea ot vacillation. Gifted with an almost feminine quickness of intuition, as well as a clear common sense, which can hardly be also termed a feminine attribute, he had, as it were, gone round every side of a question while most other people would be still hesitating over the fact of its existence.

Over such an offer as the editorship of the Tribune he had not hesitated for a second ; and if he now walked home slowly through the falling twilight, it was more to have a little leisure wherein to savourer his coming triumphs, of which the editor ship of the Tribune was but the forecast.

Chapter II

It was past six o'clock when Darell Blake got home, climbing the somewhat steep flight of steps which led to his "semi-detached " dwelling, and let himself in with his latchkey. Children's voices coming from the room on his left told him where he should find his wife ; so, after hanging up his coat and hat on the Gothic arrangement of pegs which combined the duties of coat-rack and umbrella-stand, he turned the handle of the drawing-room door and went in. The room was excellently and admirably typical (as a room should be) of the people of the house. The walls were of a light French grey colour, on which was a small gold pattern ; there was the inevitable dado a of darker colour and a different design; and the inevitable water-colours (which, according to English ideas, are the only pictures allowed to be hung in drawing-rooms) were separated from each other on the walls by battalions of Dresden china plates, either framed in ruby plush or affixed to the wall with large bows of red ribbon.

The white marble chimney-piece was " draped " — I believe that is the correct term — with ruby plush, curtains of which hung at either side, suggestive of dust traps in summer and conflagrations in winter. There were ruby curtains hanging from an elaborately gilt cornice at the bow window overlooking the street, and also to the window leading into a small conservatory overlooking the little garden at the back. But at this hour the curtains were drawn, and the room was flooded with light by three gas jets all flaring away at once in the chandelier that hung from the centre of a huge stucco "rose" in the middle of the ceiling. The " drawing-room suite " of furniture consisted of the regulation number of small chairs, arm chairs, and sofa, which no doubt were the pride of the upholsterer's heart who sold them, for red plush and rosewood were rampant in their com position.

There were many small " occasional " tables (so called, no doubt, on account of the occasions they offer for being thrown down) standing about, chiefly covered with a Zoological Garden of china animals of all kinds and all sizes. A workbasket, laden with wools and crewel-work, and a couple of newspapers, the Queen and the Court Journal, were the only evidences of any occupation which the room contained. Victoria Blake looked round at her husband with a certain expression of waiting expectancy on her face. All ideas of Queen Cophetuaship had long vanished from Victoria's mind. Of all Darell's admirers, there was none so pene trated with a belief in his power and talents as his wife. Her profound admiration for him had engendered by degrees a totally novel sensation of humility in the ci-devant Miss Tidmarsh's breast.

In her secret heart he was to her a prince in disguise, who only needed the proper opportunities that he might make himself known, and enter into his kingdom, borne onwards by public acclamation. Unemotional and unde monstrative as Victoria was by nature and education, she was, secretly, intensely proud of her husband ; in fact, it might almost be said that her pride in him was a stronger passion than her affection. As to Love the AU-Powerful, the Lord of All, the Controller of the Universe, it may be said that Victoria was as ignorant of his existence or his capacities for good or evil in man and woman, as was Darell himself, though she would have cried out at the idea had any one uttered it, and Darell would have laughed. She had married her husband because she admired him, because his manners pleased her, because her small amount ot imagination had been taken by this nineteenth century young knight who had sallied forth to conquer Dame Fortune, because the role of Queen Cophetua appealed to her, because she was opposed, and a round dozen of other similar reasons ; but the Divine Fire had not touched her heart and brain any more than it touches the hearts and brains of nine out of ten brides and bridegrooms who go to the altar in blissful igno rance of the fact.

After several years of matrimony she was not much changed. Humility in herself and pride in her husband (to a great extent because he was her husband) had replaced her former idea of condescension. She was, as she would have told you, " very fond of her husband," " devoted to her babies," and if some old fashioned pagan Asmodeus had remarked on the fact that outward signs of affection or caresses were conspicuous by their absence between the Blakes, even in private, no one would have been more surprised than they at the idea that such things should form a necessary part of their lives. They were "very fond" of each other ; they were both aware of the fact, and as to any petits soins given or expected — why, Darell was too busy to offer them, and Victoria had been too strictly and carefully brought up to expect anything of the kind.

Her occupation in life was to look after the children, to pay visits, to further Darell's social relations, and — to abstain from bothering him. It was a consideration of this last tenet of her creed that brought the waiting, expectant look into Victoria's eyes when Darell entered. She waited to see what mood he had brought back with him from the office, for she was possessed of that blessed form of tact — alas ! only too rare — which teaches a few women to leave a worried man alone until he himself puts his annoyances into words. But there was no such need this evening. Darell's iron-grey eyes were dancing with light and glee as he came across the room to where his wife was sitting, with a black-haired baby girl on her lap, while the fair-haired son and heir tacked on a zigzag course across the room to reach his mother's side.

" Kiss me, Vie," he said carelessly, as he bent over his wife, and went on, hardly aware whether she had kissed him or not, in his con centration on the one idea that filled his mind, " The Tribune offer has come at last, and I am a made man ! " and as he spoke he lifted his baby daughter out of her mother's arms and danced her up and down at arm's length far above his head. Victoria rose and stood by the chimney-piece looking at him. " What Tribune offer 1 " she asked, somewhat blankly. " Did I not tell you about it? " said Darell, still tossing the baby, who was crowing with delight. " Oh, I thought I did, but I have had so much to think of that I suppose I forgot to mention it. Sedley spoke to me about the possibility of it " " What is it ? " interrupted Victoria, who instinctively felt some important announcement was coming, and was impatient to get art it.