_ BOOK VII CHAPTER XV
EVEN COLONEL MORLEY, (KNOWING EVERYBODY AND EVERYTHING), IS PUZZLED WHEN IT COMES TO THE PLAIN QUESTION--"WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?"
"I am delighted with Vance," said Darrell, when he and the Colonel were again walking arm-in-arm. "His is not one of those meagre intellects which have nothing to spare out of the professional line. He has humour. Humour--strength's rich superfluity."
"I like your definition," said the Colonel. "And humour in Vance, though fantastic, is not without subtlety. There was much real kindness in his obvious design to quiz Lionel out of that silly enthusiasm for--"
"For a pretty child, reared up to be a strolling player," interrupted Darrell. "Don't call it silly enthusiasm. I call it chivalrous compassion. Were it other than compassion, it would not be enthusiasm--it would be degradation. But do you believe, then, that Vance's confession of first love, and its cure, was but a whimsical invention?"
COLONEL MORLEY.--"Not so. Many a grave truth is spoken jestingly. I have no doubt that, allowing for the pardonable exaggeration of a _raconteur_, Vance was narrating an episode in his own life."
DARRELL.--"Do you think that a grown man, who has ever really felt love, can make a jest of it, and to mere acquaintances?"
COLONEL MORLEY.--"Yes; if he be so thoroughly cured, that he has made a jest of it to himself. And the more lightly he speaks of it, perhaps the more solemnly at one time he felt it. Levity is his revenge on the passion that fooled him."
DARRELL.--"You are evidently an experienced philosopher in the lore of such folly. '_Consultas insapientis sapientiae_.' Yet I can scarcely believe that you have ever been in love."
"Yes, I have," said the Colonel bluntly, "and very often! Everybody at my age has--except yourself. So like a man's observation, that," continued the Colonel with much tartness. "No man ever thinks another man capable of a profound and romantic sentiment!"
DARRELL.--"True; I own my shallow fault, and beg you ten thousand pardons. So then you really believe, from your own experience, that there is much in Vance's theory and your own very happy illustration? Could we, after many years, turn back to the romance at the page at which we left off, we should--"
COLONEL MORLEY.--"Not care a straw to read on! Certainly, half the peculiar charm of a person beloved must be ascribed to locality and circumstance."
DARRELL.--"I don't quite understand you."
COLONEL MORLEY.--"Then, as you liked my former illustration, I will explain myself by another one more homely. In a room to which you are accustomed there is a piece of furniture, or an ornament, which so exactly suits the place that you say: 'The prettiest thing I ever saw!' You go away--you return--the piece of furniture or the ornament has been moved into another room. You see it there, and you say: 'Bless me, is that the thing I so much admired!' The strange room does not suit it--losing its old associations and accessories, it has lost its charm. So it is with human beings--seen in one place, the place would be nothing without them; seen in another, the place without them would be all the better!"
DARRELL (musingly)--"There are some puzzles in life which resemble the riddles a child asks you to solve. Your imagination cannot descend low enough for the right guess. Yet, when you are told, you are obliged to say, 'How clever!' Man lives to learn."
"Since you have arrived at that conviction," replied Colonel Morley, amused by his friend's gravity, "I hope that you will rest satisfied with the experiences of Vance and myself; and that if you have a mind to propose to one of the young ladies whose merits we have already discussed, you will not deem it necessary to try what effect a prolonged absence might produce on your good resolution."
"No!" said Darrell, with sudden animation. "Before three days are over my mind shall be made up." "Bravo!--as to whom of the three you would ask in marriage?"
"Or as to the idea of ever marrying again. Adieu, I am going to knock at that door."
"Mr. Vyvyan's! Ah, is it so, indeed? Verily, you are a true Dare-all."
"Do not be alarmed. I go afterwards to an exhibition with Lady Adela, and I dine with the Carr Viponts. My choice is not yet made, and my hand still free."
"His hand still free!" muttered the Colonel, pursuing his walk alone. "Yes--but three days hence--O--What will he do with it?" _