initial commit of ebook 34858HEADmain

1 files changed, 21773 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/34858.txt b/34858.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5bc0b8a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/34858.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,21773 @@
+Project Gutenberg's The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, by George Meredith
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Ordeal of Richard Feverel
+       A History of a Father and Son
+
+Author: George Meredith
+
+Editor: Frank W. Chandler
+
+Release Date: January 5, 2011 [EBook #34858]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Dianne Nolan, Louise Setzer and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  THE MODERN
+  STUDENT'S LIBRARY
+
+  EACH VOLUME EDITED BY A LEADING
+  AMERICAN AUTHORITY
+
+  This series is composed of such works as are conspicuous in the
+  province of literature for their enduring influence. Every volume
+  is recognized as essential to a liberal education and will tend to
+  infuse a love for true literature and an appreciation of the
+  qualities which cause it to endure.
+
+  _A descriptive list of the volumes published in this series appears
+  in the last pages of this volume_
+
+  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+
+
+
+  _THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY_
+
+  THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL
+
+
+
+
+    THE ORDEAL
+    OF
+    RICHARD FEVEREL
+
+    A HISTORY OF A FATHER AND SON
+
+    BY
+    GEORGE MEREDITH
+
+    EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION
+    BY
+
+    FRANK W. CHANDLER
+
+    PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND DEAN OF THE
+    COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI
+
+    CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+    NEW YORK   CHICAGO   BOSTON   ATLANTA
+
+    SAN FRANCISCO       DALLAS
+
+
+
+
+    COPYRIGHT, 1896, 1917, BY
+    CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+    Printed in the United States of America
+
+    _All rights reserved. No part of this book
+    may be reproduced in any form without
+    the permission of Charles Scribner's Sons_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                                            PAGE
+
+       I.--THE INMATES OF RAYNHAM ABBEY                              1
+
+      II.--SHOWING HOW THE FATES SELECTED THE FOURTEENTH BIRTHDAY
+              TO TRY THE STRENGTH OF THE SYSTEM                      9
+
+     III.--THE MAGIAN CONFLICT                                      16
+
+      IV.--ARSON                                                    21
+
+       V.--ADRIAN PLIES HIS HOOK                                    30
+
+      VI.--JUVENILE STRATAGEMS                                      35
+
+     VII.--DAPHNE'S BOWER                                           42
+
+    VIII.--THE BITTER CUP                                           47
+
+      IX.--A FINE DISTINCTION                                       55
+
+       X.--RICHARD PASSES THROUGH HIS PRELIMINARY ORDEAL, AND IS
+              THE OCCASION OF AN APHORISM                           60
+
+      XI.--IN WHICH THE LAST ACT OF THE BAKEWELL COMEDY IS CLOSED
+              IN A LETTER                                           67
+
+     XII.--THE BLOSSOMING SEASON                                    72
+
+    XIII.--THE MAGNETIC AGE                                         83
+
+     XIV.--AN ATTRACTION                                            92
+
+      XV.--FERDINAND AND MIRANDA                                    97
+
+     XVI.--UNMASKING OF MASTER RIPTON THOMPSON                     106
+
+    XVII.--GOOD WINE AND GOOD BLOOD                                115
+
+   XVIII.--THE SYSTEM ENCOUNTERS THE WILD OATS SPECIAL PLEA        120
+
+     XIX.--A DIVERSION PLAYED ON A PENNY WHISTLE                   124
+
+      XX.--CELEBRATES THE TIME-HONOURED TREATMENT OF A DRAGON
+              BY THE HERO                                          127
+
+     XXI.--RICHARD IS SUMMONED TO TOWN TO HEAR A SERMON            145
+
+    XXII.--INDICATES THE APPROACHES OF FEVER                       153
+
+   XXIII.--CRISIS IN THE APPLE-DISEASE                             163
+
+    XXIV.--OF THE SPRING PRIMROSE AND THE AUTUMNAL                 175
+
+     XXV.--IN WHICH THE HERO TAKES A STEP                          180
+
+    XXVI.--RECORDS THE RAPID DEVELOPMENT OF THE HERO               199
+
+   XXVII.--CONTAINS AN INTERCESSION FOR THE HEROINE                213
+
+  XXVIII.--RELATES HOW PREPARATIONS FOR ACTION WERE CONDUCTED
+              UNDER THE APRIL OF LOVERS                            216
+
+    XXIX.--IN WHICH THE LAST ACT OF THE COMEDY TAKES THE PLACE
+              OF THE FIRST                                         233
+
+     XXX.--CELEBRATES THE BREAKFAST                                246
+
+    XXXI.--THE PHILOSOPHER APPEARS IN PERSON                       255
+
+   XXXII.--PROCESSION OF THE CAKE                                  262
+
+  XXXIII.--NURSING THE DEVIL                                       279
+
+   XXXIV.--CONQUEST OF AN EPICURE                                  290
+
+    XXXV.--CLARE'S MARRIAGE                                        310
+
+   XXXVI.--A DINNER-PARTY AT RICHMOND                              325
+
+  XXXVII.--MRS. BERRY ON MATRIMONY                                 341
+
+ XXXVIII.--AN ENCHANTRESS                                          352
+
+   XXXIX.--THE LITTLE BIRD AND THE FALCON: A BERRY TO THE
+              RESCUE!                                              376
+
+      XL.--CLARE'S DIARY                                           392
+
+     XLI.--AUSTIN RETURNS                                          409
+
+    XLII.--NATURE SPEAKS                                           420
+
+   XLIII.--AGAIN THE MAGIAN CONFLICT                               429
+
+    XLIV.--THE LAST SCENE                                          437
+
+     XLV.--LADY BLANDISH TO AUSTIN WENTWORTH                       454
+
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+I
+
+Among the Victorian novelists, George Meredith occupies a place apart.
+Unlike Dickens, Thackeray, and Eliot, he appeals to a select few. Those
+who appreciate him are folk of his own temper--cultivated, intellectual,
+urbane. They are persons of taste and discernment. They are generally
+the middle-aged rather than the young. They are those who, aloof and
+contemplative, relish the comedy of life, rather than those who throw
+themselves whole-heartedly into the game. It is not to be marvelled at,
+therefore, that Meredith should have won his way slowly, or that
+recognition, when it came, should have rendered his position unique
+and secure.
+
+Meredith's career as a writer of prose was opened, in 1856, with
+_The Shaving of Shagpat_, an experiment in fantastic Oriental
+romance. In the following year, he exploited German romance less
+successfully in _Farina, a Legend of Cologne_. Having thus trained
+his 'prentice hand, he passed to mastery of his craft in _The Ordeal
+of Richard Feverel_, published in 1859. This was his first modern
+novel, and probably his best. It showed him, not only expert in the
+use of language and original in literary technic, but distinguished,
+also, as an observer of the world and an analyst of character. The
+psychological novel of George Eliot, just emerging, found here a
+rival even more subtle. _Adam Bede_, a twin-birth with _Feverel_,
+although detailed in its exploration of motive and feeling, demanded
+less mental effort on the part of its readers; it accordingly
+attracted much greater attention. Whereas it was often reprinted, no
+second edition of _Feverel_ came from the press for nearly two
+decades.
+
+In the meantime, Meredith had continued his course undeterred by
+lack of popular approval, writing six other novels before the
+appearance, in 1879, of _The Egoist_--most characteristic of all.
+Two novels in particular reflected his experience of Italy, gained
+while acting there as war correspondent in 1866. The first was
+_Emilia in England_ (1864), later rechristened _Sandra Belloni_. The
+second was its sequel _Vittoria_ (1867). The other works of the
+period comprise the semi-farcical _Evan Harrington_ (1861); the
+serious _Rhoda Fleming_ (1865); the clever _Harry Richmond_
+(1870-71); and Meredith's favorite--_Beauchamp's Career_ (1874-75).
+It is _The Egoist_, however, that most completely illustrates its
+author's conception of the novel of types. In this work, with rare
+skill and comic _elan_, if with a persistency a little wearisome,
+he lays bare the secrets of a heart and intellect thoroughly
+self-centered, proceeding so obviously from the desire to make
+out a case that he is likely to displease those who value story, yet
+satisfying those who enjoy brilliant comment on character and a
+study of its intricacies.
+
+In his later novels, Meredith never forgot the typical in attending
+to the particular, even though _The Tragic Comedians_ (1880)
+reflected incidents in the life of the socialist leader Lassalle,
+and _Diana of the Crossways_ (1885) certain traits of Sheridan's
+granddaughter, Mrs. Norton. _One of Our Conquerors_ (1891), _Lord
+Ormont and his Aminta_ (1894), and _The Amazing Marriage_ (1895)
+bring to a close the catalogue of Meredith's fiction, except for the
+unfinished _Celt and Saxon_ published after his death.
+
+Of Meredith as a poet this is not the place to speak. Suffice it to
+say that he did his first writing in verse, issuing a volume when
+twenty-three, and several others later in life, the best known being
+his sequence of irregular sonnets entitled _Modern Love_ (1867).
+His poetry, like his prose, is rich in content but difficult at
+times by reason of its crabbed and meticulous expression--a trait
+due to no obscurity of thought or lack of feeling, but rather to the
+desire to compress much meaning within a cryptic phrase. As a
+playwright, Meredith attempted comedy in The _Sentimentalists_,
+which was acted posthumously. As an essayist, he fathered a
+memorable discussion of the comic spirit and its uses, made concrete
+in his novels.
+
+Meredith's life was comparatively uneventful. He was born in 1828 at
+Portsmouth, the son of a naval outfitter. Early left an orphan, he
+was educated in Germany, and, returning to England, studied law,
+experimented in journalism, and fell in with a group of intellectuals
+led by Frederic Harrison and John Morley. He became literary
+adviser to the publishers Chapman and Hall; he edited for a
+short period _The Fortnightly Review_, and served abroad as
+correspondent for _The Morning Post_. But most of his maturity was
+passed in rural retirement in Surrey. He was twice married, at first
+unhappily to a daughter of the novelist, Thomas Love Peacock, and
+then more fortunately to a Miss Vulliamy, who bore him two children.
+His fame grew very slowly. Not until the age of sixty was he
+recognized as among the chief English novelists. But at the time of
+his death, in 1909, he was admittedly the foremost man of letters in
+Great Britain.
+
+
+II
+
+Meredith is first and last an intellectualist. Hence his preference
+for the psychological novel, for the novel of types, for the novel
+that is half essay, for the novel of distinctive style. Hence, also,
+his conception of the importance for the novelist of comedy and the
+comic spirit. Comedy, according to Meredith, is embodied mind, and
+its function is to expose violations of rational law. It is common
+sense chastising with the laughter of reason aberrations from the
+sensible. Comedy measures individual shortcomings by the social
+norm. It results from "the broad Alpine survey of the spirit born of
+our united social intelligence." It is "a game played to throw
+reflections upon social life, and it deals with human nature in the
+drawing-room of civilized men and women, where we have no dust of
+the struggling outer world, no mire, no violent crashes, to make the
+correctness of the representation convincing." Comedy is thus
+refined rather than Rabelaisian; it is impartial rather than
+sentimental. It relies upon creating ideal figures that epitomize
+mankind in certain follies. It is typical and general in character,
+whereas tragedy is concerned primarily with the individual.
+
+"The comic spirit conceives a definite situation for a number of
+characters, and rejects all accessories in the exclusive pursuit of
+them and their speech." On the stage, the great master of such
+comedy is Moliere, and in the novel, we might add, Meredith.
+Meredith's confession of faith in the efficacy of the comic spirit
+is given in the prelude to _The Egoist_, and in these words of his
+famous _Essay_: "If you believe that our civilization is founded in
+common-sense, you will, when contemplating men, discern a Spirit
+overhead.... It has the sage's brows, and the sunny malice of a faun
+lurks at the corners of the half-closed lips.... Its common aspect
+is one of unsolicitous observation.... Men's future upon earth does
+not attract it; their honesty and shapeliness in the present does;
+and whenever they wax out of proportion, overblown...; whenever they
+offend sound reason, fair justice; are false in humility or mined
+with conceit,... the Spirit overhead will look humanly malign and
+cast an oblique light on them, followed by volleys of silvery
+laughter. That is the Comic Spirit."
+
+Unquestionably it is by the aid of this spirit that Meredith writes
+his novels, even including such a tragedy from the victim's point of
+view as _Richard Feverel_. For Meredith is theoretic or nothing.
+Conceiving of a folly to be displayed and made ridiculous, he
+invents persons and situations best to accomplish his purpose. He
+is, therefore, no mere realist examining the confused detail of
+actual life "by the watchmaker's eye in luminous rings eruptive of
+the infinitesimal." He is rather an idealist, who holds it to be the
+business of art to render life in quintessence. The artist must both
+simplify and elaborate. First, he must simplify experience into
+typical deeds and persons, eliminating from his scheme the merely
+accidental and particular. Second, he must elaborate his
+simplification, presenting it through representative concrete
+instances that it may lose the aspect of an abstract formula and
+acquire emotional significance. Meredith is thus an intellectualist
+engaged in playing a game of literary chess. He has made the pattern
+on his board and designed the pieces, and he moves them according to
+a pre-arranged plan. Just as his Sir Austin seeks to enact the role
+of Providence in determining the career of Richard Feverel, so
+Meredith plays Providence to his personages, and, more than most
+novelists, he visibly controls their fate.
+
+Since Meredith's folk are etherealized specimens of humanity set and
+kept in motion by their creator, it is his attitude toward them that
+interests us quite as much as their actions. Meredith's attitude is
+determined by his comic outlook upon life. Unswayed by the petty
+prejudices of his people, he surveys them with Olympian serenity,
+aware of a hundred impulses and errors in their conduct that will
+lead to conclusions undreamt of by themselves but clearly foreseen
+by the novelist and his readers. From a rarer atmosphere than that
+in which his people move, Meredith looks down upon their whimsies
+and their deeds with a smile of calm omniscience.
+
+Moreover, he separates himself from them by a wall of clever
+comment, sometimes sparkling and ironical, sometimes soberly
+extended to the proportions of an essay. Indeed, his novels are
+sometimes one-third narrative and two-thirds essay, with the
+dissertational manner infecting the narrative parts incurably. No
+one, I suppose, would continue reading _The Egoist_ merely from
+interest in its plot. To enjoy it one must relish inspecting at
+leisure the artificial attitudes of artificial people and listening,
+not merely to their smart chatter, but to the smarter discourse of
+the master of the puppets, who, while making them dance, lectures
+for the edification of the elect. Thus Meredith, having shown his
+hero touched by jealousy, lapses into a little essay on the theme.
+"Remember the poets upon Jealousy," he writes. "It is to be haunted
+in the heaven of two by a Third; preceded or succeeded, therefore
+surrounded, embraced, hugged by this infernal Third; it is love's
+bed of burning marl; to see and taste the withering Third in the
+bosom of sweetness; to be dragged through the past and find the fair
+Eden of it sulphurous; to be dragged to the gates of the future and
+glory to behold them blood; to adore the bitter creature trebly and
+with treble power to clutch her by the windpipe; it is to be
+cheated, derided, shamed, and abject and supplicating, and
+consciously demoniacal in treacherousness, and victoriously
+self-justified in revenge." Needless to say, generalizations of this
+sort, intruding upon the narrative at every turn, choke its progress
+and prove distracting.
+
+Almost equally distracting is Meredith's predilection for resorting
+to the methods of comedy while writing fiction. As W. C. Brownell
+has put it; "The necessities of comedy, the irruption of new
+characters, their disappearance after they have done their turn,
+expectation balked by shifting situations, the frequent postponement
+of the denouement when it particularly impends, and the alleviation
+of impatience by a succession of subordinate climaxes--all the
+machinery of the stage, in fact--impair the narrative."
+
+
+III
+
+But if the tricks of the essayist and the playwright are freely
+borrowed by Meredith, sometimes to his disadvantage and to ours,
+they are nevertheless in a measure appropriate to the kind of
+fiction he affects. For Meredith is a psychological novelist. He is
+bent upon displaying the inward process of the mind. As Richard Le
+Galliene has said of him: "The passion of his genius is ... the
+tracing of the elemental in the complex; the registration of the
+infinitesimal vibrations of first causes, the tracking in human life
+of the shadowiest trail of primal instinct, the hairbreadth
+measurement of subtle psychological tangents: and the embodiment of
+these results in artistic form." Meredith, in _Richard Feverel_,
+declares that for the novel "An audience will come to whom it will
+be given to see the elementary machinery at work.... To them nothing
+will be trivial.... They will see the links of things as they pass,
+and wonder not, as foolish people now do, that this great matter
+came out of that small one." Certainly Meredith's efforts have
+tended to realize that time. But the psychology of his characters is
+general rather than individual. You are conscious that these minds
+are typical, or even symbolic. They belong to an imaginary and
+rational world treated as though it were real.
+
+An incidental passage in _Beauchamp's Career_ shows that Meredith
+has understood both his limitations and his peculiar ability. "My
+way," he writes, "is like a Rhone island in the summer drought,
+stony, unattractive, and difficult between the two forceful streams
+of the unreal and the over-real which delight mankind--honour to the
+conjurors! My people conquer nothing, win none! they are actual yet
+uncommon. It is the clockwork of the brain that they are directed to
+set in motion, and--poor troop of actors to vacant benches!--the
+conscience residing in thoughtfulness which they would appeal to;
+and if you are there impervious to them we are lost."
+
+In Meredith's novels, which indeed reveal in operation "the
+clockwork of the brain," the author has taken care still further to
+intellectualize his appeal by means of his style. His technic holds
+attention; he is an artificer of style, and, as such, he writes a
+style of artifice. He seeks to express himself with novelty and
+distinction. If a boy runs, Meredith speaks of him as being seen to
+bound "and taking a lift of arms, fly aloft, clapping heels." If a
+woman runs, Meredith writes: "She was fleet; she ran as though a
+hundred little feet were bearing her onward smooth as water over the
+lawn and the sweeps of grass of the park, so swiftly did the hidden
+pair multiply one another to speed her.... Suddenly her flight wound
+to an end in a dozen twittering steps, and she sank." If a heroine
+of eighteen would take leave of her admirer, she says: "We have met.
+It is more than I have merited. We part. In mercy let it be forever.
+Oh, terrible word! Coined by the passions of our youth, it comes to
+us for our sole riches when we are bankrupt of earthly treasures,
+and is the passport given by Abnegation unto Woe that prays to quit
+this probationary sphere."
+
+Fancy any human being--least of all a girl--discoursing thus! But,
+no matter how simple a thought or action, Meredith sends it forth
+arrayed in finer gear than Solomon in all his glory. It is
+beribboned with metaphor and personification; it is beflounced with
+epigram and allegory. It is truth rendered more precious, as the
+medieval critics advised, by being wrapped in sayings not to be
+lightly understood by the vulgar. So, when a lover admires the
+chasteness of his lady, Meredith remarks: "He saw the Goddess
+Modesty guarding Purity; and one would be bold to say that he did
+not hear the precepts, Purity's aged grannams maternal and paternal,
+cawing approval of her over their munching gums."
+
+But Meredith's gift of phrase and his knack of knocking out
+epigrams, and his mastery over metaphor and lyrical description
+cannot be too highly commended. Diana is "wind-blown but ascending."
+When Redworth sees her kindling a fire, "a little mouse of a thought
+scampered out of one of the chambers of his head and darted along
+the passages, fetching a sweat to his brows." After Sandra's
+singing, the stillness settled back again "like one folding up a
+precious jewel." A dull professor "pores over a little inexactitude
+in phrases and pecks at it like a domestic fowl." Of one who has
+ceased to love we hear that "the passion in her was like a place of
+waves evaporated to a crust of salt." Of a lady's letter we learn
+that it "flourished with light strokes all over, like a field of the
+bearded barley." Of a heroine we are told that: "She was not of the
+creatures who are excited by an atmosphere of excitement; she took
+it as the nymph of the stream her native wave, and swam on the flood
+with expansive languor, happy to have the master passions about her;
+one or two of which her dainty hand caressed fearless of a sting;
+the lady patted them as her swans." There is brilliant illumination
+in such comparisons, a light shed instantaneously upon traits and
+mental experiences otherwise not to be revealed. When the Egoist
+would affectionately approach his shrinking Clara, nothing could
+better deliver the situation than Meredith's simile: "The gulf of a
+caress hove in view like an enormous billow hollowing under the
+curled ridge. She stooped to a buttercup; the monster swept by."
+
+It is felicity in the use of rhetorical figure that enables Meredith
+to characterize the style of a Carlyle as, "resembling either early
+architecture or utter dilapidation, so loose and rough it seemed; a
+wind-in-the-orchard style, that tumbled down here and there an
+appreciable fruit with uncouth bluster; sentences without
+commencement running to abrupt endings and smoke, like waves against
+a sea wall, learned dictionary words giving a hand to street slang,
+and accents falling on them haphazard, like slant rays from driving
+clouds; all the pages in a breeze, the whole book producing a kind
+of electrical agitation in the mind and the joints." It is
+Meredith's gift for phrase that enables him to paint those wonderful
+backgrounds for action which are the despair of common writers.
+Sometimes the scenes are sketched in with but a touch or two of
+suggestion. So, when Richard Feverel and Lucy spend an evening
+afloat, Meredith writes: "Hanging between two heavens on the lake:
+floating to her voice: the moon stepping over and through white
+shoals of soft high clouds above and below: floating to her
+voice--no other breath abroad! His soul went out of his body as he
+listened." Or, when Richard, in gay company, passes a night at
+Richmond, Meredith says simply: "Silver was seen far out on Thames.
+The wine ebbed, and the laughter. Sentiment and cigars took up the
+wondrous tale."
+
+Sometimes the description is long and minute, but always it is
+beautifully fresh. Thus the coming of dawn is pictured in _The
+Amazing Marriage_: "The smell of rock-waters and roots of herb and
+moss grew keen; air became a wine that raised the breast high to
+drink it; an uplifting coolness pervaded the heights.... The plumes
+of cloud now slowly entered into the lofty arch of dawn and melted
+from brown to purple black.... The armies of the young sunrise in
+mountain-lands neighbouring the plains, vast shadows, were marching
+over woods and meads, black against the edge of golden; and great
+heights were cut with them, and bounding waters took the leap in a
+silvery radiance to gloom; the bright and dark-banded valleys were
+like night and morning taking hands down the sweep of their
+rivers."
+
+
+IV
+
+Meredith's style receives its final and distinctive flavor, however,
+from the liberal dash of aphorism with which his books are
+sprinkled. Often an epigram will turn upon some metaphor. Such is
+the statement that: "A bone in a boy's mind for him to gnaw and
+worry corrects the vagrancies and promotes the healthy activities,
+whether there be marrow in it or not," or the exclamation: "Who are
+not fools to be set spinning, if we choose to whip them with their
+vanity! It is the consolation of the great to watch them spin."
+Such, too, is the reflection that: "Most of the people one has at
+table are drums. A rub-a-dub-dub on them is the only way to get a
+sound. When they can be persuaded to do it upon one another, they
+call it conversation." More frequently, the epigram is a neat
+generalization left abstract, as for example: "Who rises from prayer
+a better man, his prayer is answered"; "Cynics are only happy in
+making the world as barren to others as they have made it for
+themselves"; "Fools run jabbering of the irony of fate to escape the
+annoyance of tracing the causes"; "Expediency is man's wisdom; doing
+right is God's"; "Women cannot repose on a man who is not positive;
+nor have they much gratification in confounding him"; "Convictions
+are generally first impressions sealed with later prejudices"; "The
+hero of two women must die and be wept over in common before they
+can appreciate one another."
+
+A thousand such jewels glitter in the richly wrought tapestry of
+Meredith's style. That he painstakingly inserted them and wove this
+fabric to attract attention by its singularity and beauty, he
+cheerfully admits in a passage of _Emilia in England_. "The point to
+be considered," he there remarks, "is whether fiction demands a
+perfectly smooth surface. Undoubtedly a scientific work does, and a
+philosophical work should. When we ask for facts simply we feel the
+intrusion of style. Of fiction it is a part. In the one case the
+classical robe, in the other any medieval phantasy of clothing."
+
+The difficulty with a style so artificial and intellectualized is
+obvious. Meredith, according to Brownell, "flatters one's cleverness
+at first, but in the end he fatigues it." The perpetual crackle of
+aphorism and metaphor surprises, gratifies, and then wearies; for a
+writer who will never say a plain thing plainly, not only keeps his
+readers under strain, but soon seems himself to be straining.
+Nowhere is this more evident than in Meredith's predilection for
+repeating a single happy phrase such as the epithet "rogue in
+porcelain" applied to a heroine. Since the phrase tickles his fancy,
+he plays with it, drops it, picks it up, mumbles it over and over as
+a dog might a bone, and through chapter after chapter is ready at
+any pretext to run round and round with it barking. Despite his
+assiduous striving for novelty, therefore, Meredith is often
+tedious, an effect induced, not merely by his style (whether
+repetitious or gasping after eccentricity), but also by his method.
+He is so intent upon weaving his commentary upon every speech and
+action that the occasion of the commentary is smothered. A phrase
+becomes the text of a sermon, a gesture the excuse for paragraphs of
+oblique reflection. Thus he forfeits the advantage of downright
+sincerity and of forthright progress, and teases interest out of all
+patience.
+
+
+V
+
+Since Meredith is an intellectualist, we naturally ask what may be
+his philosophy. Unlike Ibsen or Browning, he preaches no doctrine.
+He offers no explicit theory of life. Nor does he, like Dickens or
+Reade or Brieux, advocate any special reform. He is never a
+propagandist. Some have lamented this fact; more have seen in it an
+argument for his universality and permanence. Though he fight no
+battles for specific causes, his influence is arrayed in general
+against certain tendencies that he disapproves and would laugh to
+defeat. Egoism, sentimentalism, hypocrisy, are fair game for his
+comedy. As an intellectualist he dislikes and distrusts excess of
+emotion--feeling indulged for its own sake. "Sentimentalists," he
+declares, "are they who seek to enjoy without incurring the immense
+debtorship for a thing done."
+
+Well might Mrs. Carlyle complain that Meredith's work lacked tears.
+That it does so he would be the first to admit, for he questions the
+worth of pathos for any true captain of his soul. "Pathos is a tide;
+often it carries the awakener of it off his feet," Meredith writes.
+"We cannot quite preserve our dignity when we stoop to the work of
+calling forth tears. Moses had probably to take a nimble jump away
+from the rock after that venerable lawgiver had knocked the water
+out of it." So Meredith sacrifices passion to analysis. His heroes
+and heroines rarely love so simply and so ardently as do Richard and
+Lucy; but the affection of even this delectable pair is modified in
+presentation by the playful cynicism of the narrator of their story.
+On the other hand, it is futile to cavil at Meredith or any other
+artist for lacking such qualities as are incompatible with those he
+most notably possesses. You cannot expect abandon of passion in the
+characters of a novelist whose forte is detachment and sublimated
+common sense. Your intellectualist is not to be blamed if he fails
+to write as a sentimentalist.
+
+Meredith's positive philosophy has been formulated by Elmer J.
+Bailey in terms that may be briefly paraphrased: Meredith thinks of
+man as torn between Nature and Circumstance. By Nature is meant the
+world of instinct, of healthy normal impulse. By Circumstance is
+meant the world of artificial laws erected by society as the
+machinery for its conduct and control. Nature is spontaneous;
+Circumstance is traditional. Man may err by allowing to either undue
+dominance. His only safety lies in the use of his reason which will
+enable him to keep both Nature and Circumstance in proper equipoise.
+And the most serviceable instrument of reason for detecting the
+follies of convention or of feeling is the comic spirit. Without
+this spirit we are not truly intellectual, for, as Meredith has
+said: "Not to have a sympathy with the playful mind is not to have a
+mind." Let us possess mind, he seems to urge, and through mind
+cultivate the soul. In _The Tragic Comedians_ he remarks: "It is the
+soul which does things in life--the rest is vapor.... Action means
+life to the soul as to the body.... Compromise is virtual death; it
+is the pact between cowardice and comfort, under the title of
+expediency. So do we gather dead matter about us. So are we
+gradually self-stifled, corrupt. The war with evil in every form
+must be incessant; we cannot have peace." The serious note here
+sounded may be heard again in his letter to a friend, Mrs. Gilman.
+There Meredith says: "I have written always with the perception that
+there is no life but of the spirit; that the concrete is the
+shadowy; yet that the way to spiritual life lies in the complete
+unfolding of the creature, not in the nipping of his passions. An
+outrage to nature helps to extinguish his light."
+
+
+VI
+
+Just such an outrage to nature perpetrated with the best intentions,
+but in blind folly, is the subject of Meredith's novel, _The Ordeal
+of Richard Feverel_. A dogmatic and conventional father endeavors to
+determine his son's life according to an infallible system of
+parental dictation. Instead of allowing the boy to develop naturally
+from within, Sir Austin seeks to mould him absolutely from without.
+The failure of this experiment makes the story. The first eleven
+chapters are in a sense introductory. They present to the reader the
+members of the Feverel family and describe with gusto a poaching
+escapade of Richard's youth. From this first ordeal he emerges
+triumphant by obeying the impulse of his heart to make frank
+confession, despite his father's endeavor to patch up the matter by
+plotting. Then, in the next twenty chapters, follows the account of
+Richard's passion for the lovely Lucy and of the machinations of
+those who would nip it in the bud. All these checks are for the
+moment overcome when Richard, after having suffered separation from
+Lucy, is again thrown with her by chance and impulsively marries
+her.
+
+In the chapters next ensuing Sir Austin, instead of gracefully
+accepting defeat, masks and crushes his emotions and permits his
+Mephistophelian nephew, the cynical Adrian, to scheme for Richard's
+alienation from his bride. Richard is lured away and succumbs to the
+spell of a wicked enchantress whom at first he has thought to
+reform; and then, shamed and distraught, he wanders abroad, seeking
+a purge for his sin. Meanwhile, the deserted wife, at Adrian's
+instigation, has been assailed by a villain, the husband of
+Richard's enchantress. Issuing unscathed from her ordeal, Lucy is
+tardily accepted by the complacent Sir Austin and received, with her
+child, at his house. Since Richard has at length achieved
+self-mastery and has resolved to return and confess to his wife, and
+plead for her grace, a general reconciliation seems imminent. But
+the novelist will not allow his tale to end happily lest its moral
+be frustrate. Accordingly, although Richard returns for an hour to
+be freely forgiven by Lucy, he dashes away forthwith, despite her
+entreaties, to duel with her persecutor. Joy, even yet, might emerge
+from disaster, since Richard escapes from the duel with only a
+wound, but the author continues implacable. His heroine, in nursing
+her husband, succumbs to a strain long protracted, and Richard,
+though recovered in body, is left but a wreck of his former self.
+Such is the desolating outcome of attempting to regulate healthy
+human loves by a worldly system.
+
+What is tragic for hero and heroine is gravely comic to the eye of
+the intellectualist surveying the folly of men from a height far
+above the troubled waves of their passion. For Meredith, Sir Austin
+incarnates a comic error. His story is the comedy of one who
+theorizes at length upon life, but utterly fails to deal with it
+practically. Of course Sir Austin takes no blame to himself. It is
+useless, he reflects, "to base any system on a human being," even
+though this is precisely what he has done. And when Richard is to
+return to his wife, and Sir Austin has at last grown kind to her, we
+hear that: "He could now admit that instinct had so far beaten
+science; for, as Richard was coming, as all were to be happy, his
+wisdom embraced them all paternally as the author of their
+happiness." Of Sir Austin, Meredith remarks: "He had experimented on
+humanity in the person of the son he loved as his life, and at once,
+when the experiment appeared to have failed, all humanity's failings
+fell on the shoulders of his son." The reader's inevitable reaction
+to the novel is expressed by Lady Blandish: "Oh! how sick I am of
+theories and systems and the pretensions of men!... I shall hate the
+name of science till the day I die. Give me nothing but commonplace,
+unpretending people!"
+
+That the plot of _Richard Feverel_ unduly tantalizes goes without
+saying. The author keeps his hero and heroine apart by main force.
+Granting that Richard is the victim of rascals, as well as of a
+ridiculous system, his easy desertion of the wife whom he loves and
+his continued separation from her seem to lie in Meredith's will
+rather than in that of his hero. Richard's yielding to Mrs. Mount,
+described with remarkable power, is more natural, but his mooning
+about Germany while Lucy is left to struggle alone is as
+exasperating as her failure to apprise him of the fact that she is
+to bear him a child. Splendid as is the last meeting of Richard and
+Lucy, declared by Stevenson to be "the strongest scene since
+Shakespeare in the English tongue," it forfeits something of
+greatness because of perversity. More natural is the faint sub-plot
+intended to echo the central theme of the book in its story of
+Clare's hopeless love for Richard, at first reciprocated, and then
+blocked by Sir Austin and the girl's mother.
+
+
+VII
+
+In characterization, this novel excels. Its folk are persons and not
+alone types. Chief of the Feverel clan is Richard's father, Sir
+Austin, wounded by the infidelity of his wife and his friend, yet an
+intellectual egoist, proud of his plans for ruling the family and
+equally proud of his epigrams. Given less fully are Richard's aunt,
+the worldly mother of Clare, and his uncles--the guardsman Algernon,
+who has lost a leg at cricket, and crochety Hippias, "the dyspepsy."
+Of Richard's cousins one is sympathetic, and the other is Satanic.
+The first, Austin Wentworth, lives in disgrace for having repaired a
+youthful indiscretion by marrying a housemaid. As for the second,
+Adrian Harley, "the Wise Youth," he is Richard's tutor, whose heart
+has dropped to his stomach, a clever worldling and the contemner of
+honest passion, one of the most accomplished cynics of all
+literature. There are minor characters, too, but equally vital, from
+blunt Farmer Blaize and his son, and the disgruntled farm-hand Tom
+Bakewell, to Sir Austin's sentimental companion Lady Blandish, and
+Ripton, the faithful old dog.
+
+Of the women three stand to the fore--Lucy, Mrs. Mount, and Mrs.
+Berry. The adorable Lucy is a northern Juliet brought to sudden
+maturity by her passion for Richard. Beneath him in birth, she is
+more than his equal in manner and mind and spirit. Though shown only
+in glimpses, she is never less than entrancing. Mrs. Mount is the
+dashing temptress, a little worn and half-hearted until piqued by
+Richard's indifference into playing her game more earnestly, and
+then exerting all the fascinations of the wicked. Most original of
+the three is Lucy's vulgar befriender, Mrs. Berry, a lovable
+"old-black-satin bunch," as Meredith tags her, wise but irrelevant,
+aware of the sensual springs beneath our polite pretenses, a
+Juliet's nurse grown mellow. It is to be noted, however, that none
+of these characters is really dynamic, unless it be Mrs. Doria
+Forey, who suffers a change of heart after sacrificing that of her
+daughter, and Richard who somewhat alters under the stress of his
+ordeal.
+
+Subordinate to character, plot, and central idea, yet scarcely less
+effective in producing the total effect of the novel, are its
+setting, its style, and its author's point of view. Already
+Meredith's point of view has been defined as that of the writer of
+comedy. In the dinner scene at Richmond, for example, you are
+conscious of the author smiling apart upon callow Richard and Ripton
+caught in the snares of the demi-monde. It is Thackeray over again,
+letting us see the self-deception of Pendennis in his admiration of
+the Fotheringay. Sometimes, in this novel, Meredith apostrophizes
+his people, emitting lyrical exclamations of admiration or disgust
+at their conduct. More often, he remains aloof, though none the less
+present in spirit. Rarely does he here conform to Brownell's
+statement, more applicable to his later fictions, that: "He is not
+merely detached, he is obliterated. All he shows us of himself is
+his talent; his standpoint is to be divined."
+
+That which especially reveals the author's standpoint is what
+Professor Saintsbury, in referring to this novel, has termed its
+"style saturated with epigrammatic quality; and of strange ironic
+persiflage permeating thought, picture, and expression." The
+persiflage appears, above all, in the speeches of the saturnine
+Adrian. As for the epigrams, their number is justified in part by
+supposing them to come from Sir Austin's collection entitled "The
+Pilgrim's Scrip." They abound, however, in the speech of others and
+in the narrative proper. Typical spicings of style are the
+following: "To anchor the heart by any object ere we have half
+traversed the world is youth's foolishness"; "It is difficult for
+those who think very earnestly for their children to know when their
+children are thinking on their own account"; "If immeasurable love
+were perfect wisdom, one human being might almost impersonate
+Providence to another"; "The ways of women, which are involution,
+and their practices, which are opposition, are generally best hit
+upon by guesswork and a bold word"; "The God of this world is in the
+machine, not out of it"; "Sentimentalism is a happy pastime and an
+important science to the timid, the idle, and the heartless; but a
+damning one to them who have anything to forfeit"; "The task of
+reclaiming a bad man is extremely seductive to good women. Dear to
+their tender hearts as old china is a bad man they are mending."
+Even illiterate Mrs. Berry talks in epigram, now on checked
+matrimony, which she holds to be as injurious as checked
+perspiration, and now on the wickedness of old people, which, she
+affirms, is the excuse for the wildness of young ones. "I think it's
+always the plan in a 'dielemmer,'" she says, "to pray God and walk
+forward." To Lucy, the bride, she gives this advice: "When the
+parlour fire gets low, put coals on the kitchen fire.... Don't
+neglect your cookery. Kissing don't last; cookery do."
+
+Aside from its aphorisms, the style of _Feverel_ is essentially
+clever, but by no means so artificial as that of Meredith's later
+novels. If a stage direction seem occasionally over-elaborate, as:
+"Adrian gesticulated an acquiesced withdrawal," others are
+felicitous, as: "At last Hippias perspired in conviction," or: "He
+set his sight hard at the blue ridges of the hills," or, of Ripton
+draining a bumper at a gulp: "The farthing rushlight of his reason
+leapt and expired. He tumbled to the sofa and there stretched."
+There are fine passages, too, of description, like those concerned
+with the boyish adventures of Richard and Ripton, the Ferdinand and
+Miranda meeting of hero and heroine, the temptation episode, and the
+storm in the German forest by night. "Up started the whole forest in
+violet fire. He saw the country at the foot of the hills to the
+bounding Rhine gleam, quiver, extinguished.... Lower down the
+abysses of air rolled the wrathful crash; then white thrusts of
+light were darted from the sky, and great curving ferns, seen
+steadfast in pallor a second, were supernaturally agitated and
+vanished. Then a shrilling song roused in the leaves and the
+herbage. Prolonged and louder it sounded, as deeper and heavier the
+deluge pressed. A mighty force of water satisfied the desire of the
+earth." Admirable, also, are the mere hints of background given in a
+flashing phrase that conjures up the scene: "Look at those old elm
+branches! How they seem to mix among the stars!--glittering prints
+of winter."
+
+Taken all in all, _The Ordeal of Richard Feverel_ may be reckoned as
+Meredith's masterpiece. "My old conviction grows stronger," writes Le
+Galliene, "that it will be _Richard Feverel_ and perhaps no other of
+his novels ... that will keep his name alive in English literature."
+Certainly, Meredith has here allowed to his characters a charm of
+personality that later he tends to sacrifice in stressing their purely
+typical traits. He shows here a fire of sincerity rarely afterwards
+burning so brightly. He is less the mere essayist and more the lyric
+and dramatic tale-teller. He has set forth with skill the elements of
+a large problem, confirming the truth of Chesterton's remark that he
+combines subtlety with primal energy, and criticizes life without losing
+his appetite for it.
+
+                                            FRANK WADLEIGH CHANDLER.
+  UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI.
+
+
+
+
+THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE INMATES OF RAYNHAM ABBEY
+
+
+Some years ago a book was published under the title of "The
+Pilgrim's Scrip." It consisted of a selection of original aphorisms
+by an anonymous gentleman, who in this bashful manner gave a bruised
+heart to the world.
+
+He made no pretension to novelty. "Our new thoughts have thrilled
+dead bosoms," he wrote; by which avowal it may be seen that youth
+had manifestly gone from him, since he had ceased to be jealous of
+the ancients. There was a half-sigh floating through his pages for
+those days of intellectual coxcombry, when ideas come to us
+affecting the embraces of virgins, and swear to us they are ours
+alone, and no one else have they ever visited: and we believe them.
+
+For an example of his ideas of the sex he said:
+
+"I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man."
+
+Some excitement was produced in the bosoms of ladies by so monstrous
+a scorn of them.
+
+One adventurous person betook herself to the Heralds' College, and
+there ascertained that a Griffin between two Wheatsheaves, which
+stood on the title-page of the book, formed the crest of Sir Austin
+Absworthy Bearne Feverel, Baronet, of Raynham Abbey, in a certain
+Western county folding Thames: a man of wealth and honour, and a
+somewhat lamentable history.
+
+The outline of the baronet's story was by no means new. He had a
+wife, and he had a friend. His marriage was for love; his wife was
+a beauty; his friend was a sort of poet. His wife had his whole
+heart, and his friend all his confidence. When he selected Denzil
+Somers from among his college chums, it was not on account of any
+similarity of disposition between them, but from his intense worship
+of genius, which made him overlook the absence of principle in his
+associate for the sake of such brilliant promise. Denzil had a small
+patrimony to lead off with, and that he dissipated before he left
+college; henceforth he was dependent upon his admirer, with whom he
+lived, filling a nominal post of bailiff to the estates, and
+launching forth verse of some satiric and sentimental quality; for
+being inclined to vice, and occasionally, and in a quiet way,
+practising it, he was of course a sentimentalist and a satirist,
+entitled to lash the Age and complain of human nature. His earlier
+poems, published under the pseudonym of Diaper Sandoe, were so pure
+and bloodless in their love passages, and at the same time so biting
+in their moral tone, that his reputation was great among the
+virtuous, who form the larger portion of the English book-buying
+public. Election-seasons called him to ballad-poetry on behalf of
+the Tory party. Diaper possessed undoubted fluency, but did little,
+though Sir Austin was ever expecting much of him.
+
+A languishing, inexperienced woman, whose husband in mental and in
+moral stature is more than the ordinary height above her, and who,
+now that her first romantic admiration of his lofty bearing has worn
+off; and her fretful little refinements of taste and sentiment are
+not instinctively responded to, is thrown into no wholesome
+household collision with a fluent man, fluent in prose and rhyme.
+Lady Feverel, when she first entered on her duties at Raynham, was
+jealous of her husband's friend. By degrees she tolerated him. In
+time he touched his guitar in her chamber, and they played Rizzio
+and Mary together.
+
+    "For I am not the first who found
+    The name of Mary fatal!"
+
+says a subsequent sentimental alliterative love-poem of Diaper's.
+
+Such was the outline of the story. But the baronet could fill it
+up. He had opened his soul to these two. He had been noble Love to
+the one, and to the other perfect Friendship. He had bid them be
+brother and sister whom he loved, and live a Golden Age with him at
+Raynham. In fact, he had been prodigal of the excellences of his
+nature, which it is not good to be, and, like Timon, he became
+bankrupt, and fell upon bitterness.
+
+The faithless lady was of no particular family; an orphan daughter
+of an admiral who educated her on his half-pay, and her conduct
+struck but at the man whose name she bore.
+
+After five years of marriage, and twelve of friendship, Sir Austin
+was left to his loneliness with nothing to ease his heart of love
+upon save a little baby boy in a cradle. He forgave the man: he put
+him aside as poor for his wrath. The woman he could not forgive; she
+had sinned every way. Simple ingratitude to a benefactor was a
+pardonable transgression, for he was not one to recount and crush
+the culprit under the heap of his good deeds. But her he had raised
+to be his equal, and he judged her as his equal. She had blackened
+the world's fair aspect for him.
+
+In the presence of that world, so different to him now, he preserved
+his wonted demeanour, and made his features a flexible mask. Mrs.
+Doria Forey, his widowed sister, said that Austin might have retired
+from his Parliamentary career for a time, and given up gaieties and
+that kind of thing; her opinion, founded on observation of him in
+public and private, was, that the light thing who had taken flight
+was but a feather on her brother's Feverel-heart, and his ordinary
+course of life would be resumed. There are times when common men
+cannot bear the weight of just so much. Hippias Feverel, one of his
+brothers, thought him immensely improved by his misfortune, if the
+loss of such a person could be so designated; and seeing that
+Hippias received in consequence free quarters at Raynham, and
+possession of the wing of the Abbey she had inhabited, it is
+profitable to know his thoughts. If the baronet had given two or
+three blazing dinners in the great hall he would have deceived
+people generally, as he did his relatives and intimates. He was too
+sick for that: fit only for passive acting.
+
+The nurse-maid waking in the night beheld a solitary figure
+darkening a lamp above her little sleeping charge, and became so
+used to the sight as never to wake with a start. One night she was
+strangely aroused by a sound of sobbing. The baronet stood beside
+the cot in his long black cloak and travelling cap. His fingers
+shaded a lamp, and reddened against the fitful darkness that ever
+and anon went leaping up the wall. She could hardly believe her
+senses to see the austere gentleman, dead silent, dropping tear upon
+tear before her eyes. She lay stone-still in a trance of terror and
+mournfulness, mechanically counting the tears as they fell, one by
+one. The hidden face, the fall and flash of those heavy drops in the
+light of the lamp he held, the upright, awful figure, agitated at
+regular intervals like a piece of clockwork by the low murderous
+catch of his breath: it was so piteous to her poor human nature that
+her heart began wildly palpitating. Involuntarily the poor girl
+cried out to him, "Oh, sir!" and fell a-weeping. Sir Austin turned
+the lamp on her pillow, and harshly bade her go to sleep, striding
+from the room forthwith. He dismissed her with a purse the next day.
+
+Once, when he was seven years old, the little fellow woke up at
+night to see a lady bending over him. He talked of this the next
+day, but it was treated as a dream; until in the course of the day
+his uncle Algernon was driven home from Lobourne cricket-ground with
+a broken leg. Then it was recollected that there was a family ghost;
+and, though no member of the family believed in the ghost, none
+would have given up a circumstance that testified to its existence;
+for to possess a ghost is a distinction above titles.
+
+Algernon Feverel lost his leg, and ceased to be a gentleman in the
+Guards. Of the other uncles of young Richard, Cuthbert, the sailor,
+perished in a spirited boat expedition against a slaving negro chief
+up the Niger. Some of the gallant lieutenant's trophies of war
+decorated the little boy's play-shed at Raynham, and he bequeathed
+his sword to Richard, whose hero he was. The diplomatist and beau,
+Vivian, ended his flutterings from flower to flower by making an
+improper marriage, as is the fate of many a beau, and was struck out
+of the list of visitors. Algernon generally occupied the baronet's
+disused town-house, a wretched being, dividing his time between
+horse and card exercise: possessed, it was said, of the absurd
+notion that a man who has lost his balance by losing his leg may
+regain it by sticking to the bottle. At least, whenever he and his
+brother Hippias got together, they never failed to try whether one
+leg, or two, stood the bottle best. Much of a puritan as Sir Austin
+was in his habits, he was too good a host, and too thorough a
+gentleman, to impose them upon his guests. The brothers, and other
+relatives, might do as they would while they did not disgrace the
+name, and then it was final: they must depart to behold his
+countenance no more.
+
+Algernon Feverel was a simple man, who felt, subsequent to his
+misfortune, as he had perhaps dimly fancied it before, that his
+career lay in his legs, and was now irrevocably cut short. He taught
+the boy boxing, and shooting, and the arts of fence, and
+superintended the direction of his animal vigour with a melancholy
+vivacity. The remaining energies of Algernon's mind were devoted to
+animadversions on swift bowling. He preached it over the county,
+struggling through laborious literary compositions, addressed to
+sporting newspapers, on the Decline of Cricket. It was Algernon who
+witnessed and chronicled young Richard's first fight, which was with
+young Tom Blaize of Belthorpe Farm, three years the boy's senior.
+
+Hippias Feverel was once thought to be the genius of the family. It
+was his ill luck to have strong appetites and a weak stomach; and,
+as one is not altogether fit for the battle of life who is engaged
+in a perpetual contention with his dinner, Hippias forsook his
+prospects at the Bar, and, in the embraces of dyspepsia, compiled
+his ponderous work on the Fairy Mythology of Europe. He had little
+to do with the Hope of Raynham beyond what he endured from his
+juvenile tricks.
+
+A venerable lady, known as Great-Aunt Grantley, who had money to
+bequeath to the heir, occupied with Hippias the background of the
+house and shared her caudles with him. These two were seldom seen
+till the dinner-hour, for which they were all day preparing; and
+probably all night remembering, for the Eighteenth Century was an
+admirable trencherman, and cast age aside while there was a dish on
+the table.
+
+Mrs. Doria Forey was the eldest of the three sisters of the baronet,
+a florid affable woman, with fine teeth, exceedingly fine light wavy
+hair, a Norman nose, and a reputation for understanding men; and
+that, with these practical creatures, always means the art of
+managing them. She had married an expectant younger son of a good
+family, who deceased before the fulfilment of his prospects; and,
+casting about in her mind the future chances of her little daughter
+and sole child, Clare, she marked down a probability. The far sight,
+the deep determination, the resolute perseverance of her sex, where
+a daughter is to be provided for and a man to be overthrown,
+instigated her to invite herself to Raynham, where, with that
+daughter, she fixed herself.
+
+The other two Feverel ladies were the wife of Colonel Wentworth and
+the widow of Mr. Justice Harley: and the only thing remarkable about
+them was that they were mothers of sons of some distinction.
+
+Austin Wentworth's story was of that wretched character which to be
+comprehended, that justice should be dealt him, must be told out and
+openly; which no one dares now do.
+
+For a fault in early youth, redeemed by him nobly, according to his
+light, he was condemned to undergo the world's harsh judgment: not
+for the fault--for its atonement.
+
+"--Married his mother's housemaid," whispered Mrs. Doria, with a
+ghastly look, and a shudder at young men of republican sentiments,
+which he was reputed to entertain.
+
+"The compensation for Injustice," says the "Pilgrim's Scrip," "is,
+that in that dark Ordeal we gather the worthiest around us."
+
+And the baronet's fair friend, Lady Blandish, and some few true men
+and women, held Austin Wentworth high.
+
+He did not live with his wife; and Sir Austin, whose mind was bent
+on the future of our species, reproached him with being barren to
+posterity, while knaves were propagating.
+
+The principal characteristic of the second nephew, Adrian Harley,
+was his sagacity. He was essentially the wise youth, both in counsel
+and in action.
+
+"In action," the "Pilgrim's Scrip" observes, "Wisdom goes by
+majorities."
+
+Adrian had an instinct for the majority, and, as the world
+invariably found him enlisted in its ranks, his appellation of wise
+youth was acquiesced in without irony.
+
+The wise youth, then, had the world with him, but no friends. Nor
+did he wish for those troublesome appendages of success. He caused
+himself to be required by people who could serve him; feared by such
+as could injure. Not that he went out of the way to secure his end,
+or risked the expense of a plot. He did the work as easily as he ate
+his daily bread. Adrian was an epicurean; one whom Epicurus would
+have scourged out of his garden, certainly: an epicurean of our
+modern notions. To satisfy his appetites without rashly staking his
+character, was the wise youth's problem for life. He had no
+intimates except Gibbon and Horace, and the society of these fine
+aristocrats of literature helped him to accept humanity as it had
+been, and was; a supreme ironic procession, with laughter of Gods in
+the background. Why not laughter of mortals also? Adrian had his
+laugh in his comfortable corner. He possessed peculiar attributes of
+a heathen God. He was a disposer of men: he was polished, luxurious,
+and happy--at their cost. He lived in eminent self-content, as one
+lying on soft cloud, lapt in sunshine. Nor Jove, nor Apollo, cast
+eye upon the maids of earth with cooler fire of selection, or
+pursued them in the covert with more sacred impunity. And he enjoyed
+his reputation for virtue as something additional. Stolen fruits are
+said to be sweet; undeserved rewards are exquisite.
+
+The best of it was, that Adrian made no pretences. He did not
+solicit the favourable judgment of the world. Nature and he
+attempted no other concealment than the ordinary mask men wear. And
+yet the world would proclaim him moral, as well as wise, and the
+pleasing converse every way of his disgraced cousin Austin.
+
+In a word, Adrian Harley had mastered his philosophy at the early
+age of one-and-twenty. Many would be glad to say the same at that
+age twice-told: they carry in their breasts a burden with which
+Adrian's was not loaded. Mrs. Doria was nearly right about his
+heart. A singular mishap (at his birth, possibly, or before it) had
+unseated that organ, and shaken it down to his stomach, where it was
+a much lighter, nay, an inspiring weight, and encouraged him merrily
+onward. Throned there it looked on little that did not arrive to
+gratify it. Already that region was a trifle prominent in the person
+of the wise youth, and carried, as it were, the flag of his
+philosophical tenets in front of him. He was charming after dinner,
+with men or with women: delightfully sarcastic: perhaps a little too
+unscrupulous in his moral tone, but that his moral reputation belied
+him, and it must be set down to generosity of disposition.
+
+Such was Adrian Harley, another of Sir Austin's intellectual
+favourites, chosen from mankind to superintend the education of his
+son at Raynham. Adrian had been destined for the Church. He did not
+enter into Orders. He and the baronet had a conference together one
+day, and from that time Adrian became a fixture in the Abbey. His
+father died in his promising son's college term, bequeathing him
+nothing but his legal complexion, and Adrian became stipendiary
+officer in his uncle's household.
+
+A playfellow of Richard's occasionally, and the only comrade of his
+age that he ever saw, was Master Ripton Thompson, the son of Sir
+Austin's solicitor, a boy without a character.
+
+A comrade of some description was necessary, for Richard was neither
+to go to school nor to college. Sir Austin considered that the
+schools were corrupt, and maintained that young lads might by
+parental vigilance be kept pretty secure from the Serpent until Eve
+sided with him: a period that might be deferred, he said. He had a
+system of education for his son. How it worked we shall see.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SHOWING HOW THE FATES SELECTED THE FOURTEENTH BIRTHDAY TO TRY THE
+STRENGTH OF THE SYSTEM
+
+
+October shone royally on Richard's fourteenth birthday. The brown
+beechwoods and golden birches glowed to a brilliant sun. Banks of
+moveless cloud hung about the horizon, mounded to the west, where
+slept the wind. Promise of a great day for Raynham, as it proved to
+be, though not in the manner marked out.
+
+Already archery-booths and cricketing-tents were rising on the lower
+grounds towards the river, whither the lads of Bursley and Lobourne,
+in boats and in carts, shouting for a day of ale and honour, jogged
+merrily to match themselves anew, and pluck at the living laurel
+from each other's brows, like manly Britons. The whole park was
+beginning to be astir and resound with holiday cries. Sir Austin
+Feverel, a thorough good Tory, was no game-preserver, and could be
+popular whenever he chose, which Sir Miles Papworth, on the other
+side of the river, a fast-handed Whig and terror to poachers, never
+could be. Half the village of Lobourne was seen trooping through the
+avenues of the park. Fiddlers and gipsies clamoured at the gates for
+admission; white smocks, and slate, surmounted by hats of serious
+brim, and now and then a scarlet cloak, smacking of the old country,
+dotted the grassy sweeps to the levels.
+
+And all the time the star of these festivities was receding further
+and further, and eclipsing himself with his reluctant serf Ripton,
+who kept asking what they were to do and where they were going, and
+how late it was in the day, and suggesting that the lads of Lobourne
+would be calling out for them, and Sir Austin requiring their
+presence, without getting any attention paid to his misery or
+remonstrances. For Richard had been requested by his father to
+submit to medical examination like a boor enlisting for a soldier,
+and he was in great wrath.
+
+He was flying as though he would have flown from the shameful
+thought of what had been asked of him. By-and-by he communicated his
+sentiments to Ripton, who said they were those of a girl: an
+offensive remark, remembering which, Richard, after they had
+borrowed a couple of guns at the bailiff's farm, and Ripton had
+fired badly, called his friend a fool.
+
+Feeling that circumstances were making him look wonderfully like
+one, Ripton lifted his head and retorted defiantly, "I'm not!"
+
+This angry contradiction, so very uncalled for, annoyed Richard, who
+was still smarting at the loss of the birds, owing to Ripton's bad
+shot, and was really the injured party. He therefore bestowed the
+abusive epithet on Ripton anew, and with increase of emphasis.
+
+"You shan't call me so, then, whether I am or not," says Ripton, and
+sucks his lips.
+
+This was becoming personal. Richard sent up his brows, and stared at
+his defier an instant. He then informed him that he certainly should
+call him so, and would not object to call him so twenty times.
+
+"Do it, and see!" returns Ripton, rocking on his feet, and breathing
+quick.
+
+With a gravity of which only boys and other barbarians are capable,
+Richard went through the entire number, stressing the epithet to
+increase the defiance and avoid monotony, as he progressed, while
+Ripton bobbed his head every time in assent, as it were, to his
+comrade's accuracy, and as a record for his profound humiliation.
+The dog they had with them gazed at the extraordinary performance
+with interrogating wags of the tail.
+
+Twenty times, duly and deliberately, Richard repeated the obnoxious
+word.
+
+At the twentieth solemn iteration of Ripton's capital shortcoming,
+Ripton delivered a smart back-hander on Richard's mouth, and squared
+precipitately; perhaps sorry when the deed was done, for he was a
+kind-hearted lad, and as Richard simply bowed in acknowledgment of
+the blow he thought he had gone too far. He did not know the young
+gentleman he was dealing with. Richard was extremely cool.
+
+"Shall we fight here?" he said.
+
+"Anywhere you like," replied Ripton.
+
+"A little more into the wood, I think. We may be interrupted." And
+Richard led the way with a courteous reserve that somewhat chilled
+Ripton's ardour for the contest. On the skirts of the wood, Richard
+threw off his jacket and waistcoat, and, quite collected, waited for
+Ripton to do the same. The latter boy was flushed and restless;
+older and broader, but not so tight-limbed and well-set. The Gods,
+sole witnesses of their battle, betted dead against him. Richard had
+mounted the white cockade of the Feverels, and there was a look in
+him that asked for tough work to extinguish. His brows, slightly
+lined upward at the temples, converging to a knot about the well-set
+straight nose; his full grey eyes, open nostrils, and planted feet,
+and a gentlemanly air of calm and alertness, formed a spirited
+picture of a young combatant. As for Ripton, he was all abroad, and
+fought in schoolboy style--that is, he rushed at the foe head
+foremost, and struck like a windmill. He was a lumpy boy. When he
+did hit, he made himself felt; but he was at the mercy of science.
+To see him come dashing in, blinking and puffing and whirling his
+arms abroad while the felling blow went straight between them, you
+perceived that he was fighting a fight of desperation, and knew it.
+For the dreaded alternative glared him in the face that, if he
+yielded, he must look like what he had been twenty times
+calumniously called; and he would die rather than yield, and swing
+his windmill till he dropped. Poor boy! he dropped frequently. The
+gallant fellow fought for appearances, and down he went. The Gods
+favour one of two parties. Prince Turnus was a noble youth; but he
+had not Pallas at his elbow. Ripton was a capital boy; he had no
+science. He could not prove he was not a fool! When one comes to
+think of it, Ripton did choose the only possible way, and we should
+all of us have considerable difficulty in proving the negative by
+any other. Ripton came on the unerring fist again and again; and if
+it was true, as he said in short colloquial gasps, that he required
+as much beating as an egg to be beaten thoroughly, a fortunate
+interruption alone saved our friend from resembling that substance.
+The boys heard summoning voices, and beheld Mr. Morton of Poer Hall
+and Austin Wentworth stepping towards them.
+
+A truce was sounded, jackets were caught up, guns shouldered, and
+off they trotted in concert through the depths of the wood, not
+stopping till that and half-a-dozen fields and a larch plantation
+were well behind them.
+
+When they halted to take breath, there was a mutual study of faces.
+Ripton's was much discoloured, and looked fiercer with its natural
+war-paint than the boy felt. Nevertheless, he squared up dauntlessly
+on the new ground, and Richard, whose wrath was appeased, could not
+refrain from asking him whether he had not really had enough.
+
+"Never!" shouts the noble enemy.
+
+"Well, look here," said Richard, appealing to common sense, "I'm
+tired of knocking you down. I'll say you're not a fool, if you'll
+give me your hand."
+
+Ripton demurred an instant to consult with honour, who bade him
+catch at his chance.
+
+He held out his hand. "There!" and the boys grasped hands and were
+fast friends. Ripton had gained his point, and Richard decidedly had
+the best of it. So they were on equal ground. Both could claim a
+victory, which was all the better for their friendship.
+
+Ripton washed his face and comforted his nose at a brook, and was
+now ready to follow his friend wherever he chose to lead. They
+continued to beat about for birds. The birds on the Raynham estates
+were found singularly cunning, and repeatedly eluded the aim of
+these prime shots, so they pushed their expedition into the lands of
+their neighbours, in search of a stupider race, happily oblivious of
+the laws and conditions of trespass; unconscious, too, that they
+were poaching on the demesne of the notorious Farmer Blaize, the
+free-trade farmer under the shield of the Papworths, no worshipper
+of the Griffin between two Wheatsheaves; destined to be much allied
+with Richard's fortunes from beginning to end. Farmer Blaize hated
+poachers, and especially young chaps poaching, who did it mostly
+from impudence. He heard the audacious shots popping right and left,
+and going forth to have a glimpse at the intruders, and observing
+their size, swore he would teach my gentlemen a thing, lords or no
+lords.
+
+Richard had brought down a beautiful cock-pheasant, and was
+exulting over it, when the farmer's portentous figure burst upon
+them, cracking an avenging horsewhip. His salute was ironical.
+
+"Havin' good sport, gentlemen, are ye?"
+
+"Just bagged a splendid bird!" radiant Richard informed him.
+
+"Oh!" Farmer Blaize gave an admonitory flick of the whip.
+
+"Just let me clap eye on't, then."
+
+"Say, please," interposed Ripton, who was not blind to doubtful
+aspects.
+
+Farmer Blaize threw up his chin, and grinned grimly.
+
+"Please to you, sir? Why, my chap, you looks as if ye didn't much
+mind what come t'yer nose, I reckon. You looks an old poacher, you
+do. Tall ye what 'tis!" He changed his banter to business, "That
+bird's mine! Now you jest hand him over, and sheer off, you dam
+young scoundrels! I know ye!" And he became exceedingly opprobrious,
+and uttered contempt of the name of Feverel.
+
+Richard opened his eyes.
+
+"If you wants to be horsewhipped, you'll stay where y'are!"
+continued the farmer. "Giles Blaize never stands nonsense!"
+
+"Then we'll stay," quoth Richard.
+
+"Good! so be't! If you will have't, have't, my men!"
+
+As a preparatory measure, Farmer Blaize seized a wing of the bird,
+on which both boys flung themselves desperately, and secured it
+minus the pinion.
+
+"That's your game," cried the farmer. "Here's a taste of horsewhip
+for ye. I never stands nonsense!" and sweetch went the mighty whip,
+well swayed. The boys tried to close with him. He kept his distance
+and lashed without mercy. Black blood was made by Farmer Blaize that
+day! The boys wriggled, in spite of themselves. It was like a
+relentless serpent coiling, and biting, and stinging their young
+veins to madness. Probably they felt the disgrace of the contortions
+they were made to go through more than the pain, but the pain was
+fierce, for the farmer laid about from a practised arm, and did not
+consider that he had done enough till he was well breathed and his
+ruddy jowl inflamed. He paused, to receive the remainder of the
+cock-pheasant in his face.
+
+"Take your beastly bird," cried Richard.
+
+"Money, my lads, and interest," roared the farmer, lashing out
+again.
+
+Shameful as it was to retreat, there was but that course open to
+them. They decided to surrender the field.
+
+"Look! you big brute," Richard shook his gun, hoarse with passion,
+"I'd have shot you, if I'd been loaded. Mind! if I come across you
+when I'm loaded, you coward, I'll fire!"
+
+The un-English nature of this threat exasperated Farmer Blaize, and
+he pressed the pursuit in time to bestow a few farewell stripes as
+they were escaping tight-breeched into neutral territory. At the
+hedge they parleyed a minute, the farmer to inquire if they had had
+a mortal good tanning and were satisfied, for when they wanted a
+further instalment of the same they were to come for it to Belthorpe
+Farm, and there it was in pickle: The boys meantime exploding in
+menaces and threats of vengeance, on which the farmer contemptuously
+turned his back. Ripton had already stocked an armful of flints for
+the enjoyment of a little skirmishing. Richard, however, knocked
+them all out, saying, "No! Gentlemen don't fling stones; leave that
+to the blackguards."
+
+"Just one shy at him!" pleaded Ripton, with his eye on Farmer
+Blaize's broad mark, and his whole mind drunken with a sudden
+revelation of the advantages of light troops in opposition to
+heavies.
+
+"No," said Richard, imperatively, "no stones," and marched briskly
+away. Ripton followed with a sigh. His leader's magnanimity was
+wholly beyond him. A good spanking mark at the farmer would have
+relieved Master Ripton; it would have done nothing to console
+Richard Feverel for the ignominy he had been compelled to submit to.
+Ripton was familiar with the rod, a monster much despoiled of his
+terrors by intimacy. Birch-fever was past with this boy. The
+horrible sense of shame, self-loathing, universal hatred, impotent
+vengeance, as if the spirit were steeped in abysmal blackness, which
+comes upon a courageous and sensitive youth condemned for the first
+time to taste this piece of fleshly bitterness, and suffer what he
+feels is a defilement, Ripton had weathered and forgotten. He was
+seasoned wood, and took the world pretty wisely; not reckless of
+castigation, as some boys become, nor oversensitive as to dishonour,
+as his friend and comrade beside him was.
+
+Richard's blood was poisoned. He had the fever on him severely. He
+would not allow stone-flinging, because it was a habit of his to
+discountenance it. Mere gentlemanly considerations had scarce
+shielded Farmer Blaize, and certain very ungentlemanly schemes were
+coming to ghastly heads in the tumult of his brain; rejected solely
+from their glaring impracticability even to his young intelligence.
+A sweeping and consummate vengeance for the indignity alone should
+satisfy him. Something tremendous must be done, and done without
+delay. At one moment he thought of killing all the farmer's cattle;
+next of killing him; challenging him to single combat with the arms,
+and according to the fashion of gentlemen. But the farmer was a
+coward; he would refuse. Then he, Richard Feverel, would stand by
+the farmer's bedside, and rouse him; rouse him to fight with powder
+and ball in his own chamber, in the cowardly midnight, where he
+might tremble, but dare not refuse.
+
+"Lord!" cried simple Ripton, while these hopeful plots were raging
+in his comrade's brain, now sparkling for immediate execution, and
+anon lapsing disdainfully dark in their chances of fulfilment, "how
+I wish you'd have let me notch him, Ricky! I'm a safe shot. I never
+miss. I should feel quite jolly if I'd spanked him once. We should
+have had the best of him at that game. I say!" and a sharp thought
+drew Ripton's ideas nearer home, "I wonder whether my nose is as bad
+as he says! Where can I see myself?"
+
+To these exclamations Richard was deaf, and he trudged steadily
+forward, facing but one object.
+
+After tearing through innumerable hedges, leaping fences, jumping
+dykes, penetrating brambly copses, and getting dirty, ragged, and
+tired, Ripton awoke from his dream of Farmer Blaize and a blue nose
+to the vivid consciousness of hunger; and this grew with the
+rapidity of light upon him, till in the course of another minute he
+was enduring the extremes of famine, and ventured to question his
+leader whither he was being conducted. Raynham was out of sight.
+They were a long way down the valley, miles from Lobourne, in a
+country of sour pools, yellow brooks, rank pasturage, desolate
+heath. Solitary cows were seen; the smoke of a mud cottage; a cart
+piled with peat; a donkey grazing at leisure, oblivious of an unkind
+world; geese by a horse-pond, gabbling as in the first loneliness of
+creation; uncooked things that a famishing boy cannot possibly care
+for, and must despise. Ripton was in despair.
+
+"Where _are_ you going to?" he inquired with a voice of the last
+time of asking, and halted resolutely.
+
+Richard now broke his silence to reply, "Anywhere."
+
+"Anywhere!" Ripton took up the moody word. "But ain't you awfully
+hungry?" he gasped vehemently, in a way that showed the total
+emptiness of his stomach.
+
+"No," was Richard's brief response.
+
+"Not hungry!" Ripton's amazement lent him increased vehemence. "Why,
+you haven't had anything to eat since breakfast! Not hungry? I
+declare I'm starving. I feel such a gnawing I could eat dry bread
+and cheese!"
+
+Richard sneered: not for reasons that would have actuated a similar
+demonstration of the philosopher.
+
+"Come," cried Ripton, "at all events, tell us where you're going to
+stop."
+
+Richard faced about to make a querulous retort. The injured and
+hapless visage that met his eye disarmed him. The lad's nose, though
+not exactly of the dreaded hue, was really becoming discoloured. To
+upbraid him would be cruel. Richard lifted his head, surveyed the
+position, and exclaiming "Here!" dropped down on a withered bank,
+leaving Ripton to contemplate him as a puzzle whose every new move
+was a worse perplexity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE MAGIAN CONFLICT
+
+
+Among boys there are laws of honour and chivalrous codes, not
+written or formally taught, but intuitively understood by all, and
+invariably acted upon by the loyal and the true. The race is not
+nearly civilized, we must remember. Thus, not to follow your leader
+whithersoever he may think proper to lead; to back out of an
+expedition because the end of it frowns dubious, and the present
+fruit of it is discomfort; to quit a comrade on the road, and return
+home without him: these are tricks which no boy of spirit would be
+guilty of, let him come to any description of mortal grief in
+consequence. Better so than have his own conscience denouncing him
+sneak. Some boys who behave boldly enough are not troubled by this
+conscience, and the eyes and the lips of their fellows have to
+supply the deficiency. They do it with just as haunting, and even
+more horrible pertinacity, than the inner voice, and the result, if
+the probation be not very severe and searching, is the same. The
+leader can rely on the faithfulness of his host: the comrade is
+sworn to serve. Master Ripton Thompson was naturally loyal. The idea
+of turning off and forsaking his friend never once crossed his mind,
+though his condition was desperate, and his friend's behaviour that
+of a Bedlamite. He announced several times impatiently that they
+would be too late for dinner. His friend did not budge. Dinner
+seemed nothing to him. There he lay plucking grass, and patting the
+old dog's nose, as if incapable of conceiving what a thing hunger
+was. Ripton took half-a-dozen turns up and down, and at last flung
+himself down beside the taciturn boy, accepting his fate.
+
+Now, the chance that works for certain purposes sent a smart shower
+from the sinking sun, and the wet sent two strangers for shelter in
+the lane behind the hedge where the boys reclined. One was a
+travelling tinker, who lit a pipe and spread a tawny umbrella. The
+other was a burly young countryman, pipeless and tentless. They
+saluted with a nod, and began recounting for each other's benefit
+the day-long doings of the weather, as it had affected their
+individual experience and followed their prophecies. Both had
+anticipated and foretold a bit of rain before night, and therefore
+both welcomed the wet with satisfaction. A monotonous betweenwhiles
+kind of talk they kept droning, in harmony with the still hum of the
+air. From the weather theme they fell upon the blessings of tobacco;
+how it was the poor man's friend, his company, his consolation, his
+comfort, his refuge at night, his first thought in the morning.
+
+"Better than a wife!" chuckled the tinker. "No curtain-lecturin'
+with a pipe. Your pipe an't a shrew."
+
+"That be it!" the other chimed in. "Your pipe doan't mak' ye out wi'
+all the cash Saturday evenin'."
+
+"Take one," said the tinker, in the enthusiasm of the moment,
+handing a grimy short clay. Speed-the-Plough filled from the
+tinker's pouch, and continued his praises.
+
+"Penny a day, and there y'are, primed! Better than a wife? Ha, ha!"
+
+"And you can get rid of it, if ye wants for to, and when ye wants,"
+added tinker.
+
+"So ye can!" Speed-the-Plough took him up. "And ye doan't want for
+to. Leastways, t'other case. I means pipe."
+
+"And," continued tinker, comprehending him perfectly, "it don't
+bring repentance after it."
+
+"Not nohow, master, it doan't! And"--Speed-the-Plough cocked his
+eye--"it doan't eat up half the victuals, your pipe doan't."
+
+Here the honest yeoman gesticulated his keen sense of a clincher,
+which the tinker acknowledged; and having, so to speak, sealed up
+the subject by saying the best thing that could be said, the two
+smoked for some time in silence to the drip and patter of the
+shower.
+
+Ripton solaced his wretchedness by watching them through the briar
+hedge. He saw the tinker stroking a white cat, and appealing to her,
+every now and then, as his missus, for an opinion or a confirmation;
+and he thought that a curious sight. Speed-the-Plough was stretched
+at full length, with his boots in the rain, and his head amidst the
+tinker's pots, smoking, profoundly contemplative. The minutes seemed
+to be taken up alternately by the grey puffs from their mouths.
+
+It was the tinker who renewed the colloquy. Said he, "Times is bad!"
+
+His companion assented, "Sure-ly!"
+
+"But it somehow comes round right," resumed the tinker. "Why, look
+here. Where's the good o' moping? I sees it all come round right and
+tight. Now I travels about. I've got my beat. 'Casion calls me
+t'other day to Newcastle!--Eh?"
+
+"Coals!" ejaculated Speed-the-Plough sonorously.
+
+"Coals!" echoed the tinker. "You ask what I goes there for, mayhap?
+Never you mind. One sees a mort o' life in my trade. Not for coals
+it isn't. And I don't carry 'em there, neither. Anyhow, I comes
+back. London's my mark. Says I, I'll see a bit o' the sea, and steps
+aboard a collier. We were as nigh wrecked as the prophet Paul."
+
+"--A--who's him?" the other wished to know.
+
+"Read your Bible," said the tinker. "We pitched and tossed--'tain't
+that game at sea 'tis on land, I can tell ye! I thinks, down we're
+a-going--say your prayers, Bob Tiles! That was a night, to be sure!
+But God's above the devil, and here I am, ye see."
+
+Speed-the-Plough lurched round on his elbow and regarded him
+indifferently. "D'ye call that doctrin'? He bean't al'ays, or I
+shoo'n't be scrapin' my heels wi' nothin' to do, and, what's warse,
+nothin' to eat. Why, look heer. Luck's luck, and bad luck's the
+contrary. Varmer Bollop, t'other day, has's rick burnt down. Next
+night his gran'ry's burnt. What do he tak' and go and do? He takes
+and goes and hangs unsel', and turns us out of his employ. God
+warn't above the devil then, I thinks, or I can't make out the
+reckonin'."
+
+The tinker cleared his throat, and said it was a bad case.
+
+"And a darn'd bad case. I'll tak' my oath on't!" cried
+Speed-the-Plough. "Well, look heer! Heer's another darn'd bad case.
+I threshed for Varmer Blaize--Blaize o' Beltharpe--afore I goes to
+Varmer Bollop. Varmer Blaize misses pilkins. He swears our chaps
+steals pilkins. 'Twarn't me steals 'em. What do _he_ tak' and go and
+do? He takes and tarns us off, me and another, neck and crop, to
+scuffle about and starve, for all _he_ keers. God warn't above the
+devil then, I thinks. Not nohow, as I can see!"
+
+The tinker shook his head, and said that was a bad case also.
+
+"And you can't mend it," added Speed-the-Plough. "It's bad, and
+there it be. But I'll tell ye what, master. Bad wants payin' for."
+He nodded and winked mysteriously. "Bad has its wages as well's
+honest work, I'm thinkin'. Varmer Bollop I don't owe no grudge to:
+Varmer Blaize I do. And I shud like to stick a Lucifer in his rick
+some dry windy night." Speed-the-Plough screwed up an eye
+villainously. "He wants hittin' in the wind,--jest where the pocket
+is, master, do Varmer Blaize, and he'll cry out 'O Lor'!' Varmer
+Blaize will. You won't get the better o' Varmer Blaize by no means,
+as I makes out, if ye doan't hit into him jest there."
+
+The tinker sent a rapid succession of white clouds from his mouth,
+and said that would be taking the devil's side of a bad case.
+Speed-the-Plough observed energetically that, if Farmer Blaize was
+on the other, he should be on that side.
+
+There was a young gentleman close by, who thought with him. The hope
+of Raynham had lent a careless half-compelled attention to the
+foregoing dialogue, wherein a common labourer and a travelling
+tinker had propounded and discussed one of the most ancient theories
+of transmundane dominion and influence on mundane affairs. He now
+started to his feet, and came tearing through the briar hedge,
+calling out for one of them to direct them the nearest road to
+Bursley. The tinker was kindling preparations for his tea, under the
+tawny umbrella. A loaf was set forth, on which Ripton's eyes, stuck
+in the hedge, fastened ravenously. Speed-the-Plough volunteered
+information that Bursley was a good three mile from where they
+stood, and a good eight mile from Lobourne.
+
+"I'll give you half-a-crown for that loaf, my good fellow," said
+Richard to the tinker.
+
+"It's a bargain," quoth the tinker, "eh, missus?"
+
+His cat replied by humping her back at the dog.
+
+The half-crown was tossed down, and Ripton, who had just succeeded
+in freeing his limbs from the briar, prickly as a hedgehog, collared
+the loaf.
+
+"Those young squires be sharp-set, and no mistake," said the tinker
+to his companion. "Come! we'll to Bursley after 'em, and talk it out
+over a pot o' beer." Speed-the-Plough was nothing loath, and in a
+short time they were following the two lads on the road to Bursley,
+while a horizontal blaze shot across the autumn land from the
+Western edge of the rain-cloud.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+ARSON
+
+
+Search for the missing boys had been made everywhere over Raynham,
+and Sir Austin was in grievous discontent. None had seen them save
+Austin Wentworth and Mr. Morton. The baronet sat construing their
+account of the flight of the lads when they were hailed, and
+resolved it into an act of rebellion on the part of his son. At
+dinner he drank the young heir's health in ominous silence. Adrian
+Harley stood up in his place to propose the health. His speech was a
+fine piece of rhetoric. He warmed in it till, after the Ciceronic
+model, inanimate objects were personified, and Richard's
+table-napkin and vacant chair were invoked to follow the steps of a
+peerless father, and uphold with his dignity the honour of the
+Feverels. Austin Wentworth, whom a soldier's death compelled to take
+his father's place in support of the toast, was tame after such
+magniloquence. But the reply, the thanks which young Richard should
+have delivered in person were not forthcoming. Adrian's oratory had
+given but a momentary life to napkin and chair. The company of
+honoured friends, and aunts, and uncles, and remotest cousins, were
+glad to disperse and seek amusement in music and tea. Sir Austin did
+his utmost to be hospitably cheerful, and requested them to dance.
+If he had desired them to laugh he would have been obeyed, and in as
+hearty a manner.
+
+"How triste!" said Mrs. Doria Forey to Lobourne's curate, as that
+most enamoured automaton went through his paces beside her with
+professional stiffness.
+
+"One who does not suffer can hardly assent," the curate answered,
+basking in her beams.
+
+"Ah, you are good!" exclaimed the lady. "Look at my Clare. She will
+not dance on her cousin's birthday with any one but him. What are we
+to do to enliven these people?"
+
+"Alas, madam! you cannot do for all what you do for one," the
+curate sighed, and wherever she wandered in discourse, drew her back
+with silken strings to gaze on his enamoured soul.
+
+He was the only gratified stranger present. The others had designs
+on the young heir. Lady Attenbury of Longford House had brought her
+highly-polished specimen of marketware, the Lady Juliana Jaye, for a
+first introduction to him, thinking he had arrived at an age to
+estimate and pine for her black eyes and pretty pert mouth. The Lady
+Juliana had to pair off with a dapper Papworth, and her mama was
+subjected to the gallantries of Sir Miles, who talked land and
+steam-engines to her till she was sick, and had to be impertinent in
+self-defence. Lady Blandish, the delightful widow, sat apart with
+Adrian, and enjoyed his sarcasms on the company. By ten at night the
+poor show ended, and the rooms were dark, dark as the prognostics
+multitudinously hinted by the disappointed and chilled guests
+concerning the probable future of the hope of Raynham. Little Clare
+kissed her mama, curtsied to the lingering curate, and went to bed
+like a very good girl. Immediately the maid had departed, little
+Clare deliberately exchanged night attire for that of day. She was
+noted as an obedient child. Her light was always allowed to burn in
+her room for half-an-hour, to counteract her fears of the dark. She
+took the light, and stole on tiptoe to Richard's room. No Richard
+was there. She peeped in further and further. A trifling agitation
+of the curtains shot her back through the door and along the passage
+to her own bedchamber with extreme expedition. She was not much
+alarmed, but feeling guilty she was on her guard. In a short time
+she was prowling about the passages again. Richard had slighted and
+offended the little lady, and was to be asked whether he did not
+repent such conduct toward his cousin; not to be asked whether he
+had forgotten to receive his birthday kiss from her; for, if he did
+not choose to remember that, Miss Clare would never remind him of
+it, and to-night should be his last chance of a reconciliation. Thus
+she meditated, sitting on a stair, and presently heard Richard's
+voice below in the hall, shouting for supper.
+
+"Master Richard has returned," old Benson the butler tolled out
+intelligence to Sir Austin.
+
+"Well?" said the baronet.
+
+"He complains of being hungry," the butler hesitated, with a look of
+solemn disgust.
+
+"Let him eat."
+
+Heavy Benson hesitated still more as he announced that the boy had
+called for wine. It was an unprecedented thing. Sir Austin's brows
+were portending an arch, but Adrian suggested that he wanted
+possibly to drink his birthday, and claret was conceded.
+
+The boys were in the vortex of a partridge-pie when Adrian strolled
+in to them. They had now changed characters. Richard was uproarious.
+He drank a health with every glass; his cheeks were flushed and his
+eyes brilliant. Ripton looked very much like a rogue on the tremble
+of detection, but his honest hunger and the partridge-pie shielded
+him awhile from Adrian's scrutinizing glance. Adrian saw there was
+matter for study, if it were only on Master Ripton's betraying nose,
+and sat down to hear and mark.
+
+"Good sport, gentlemen, I trust to hear?" he began his quiet banter,
+and provoked a loud peal of laughter from Richard.
+
+"Ha, ha! I say, Rip: 'Havin' good sport, gentlemen, are ye?' You
+remember the farmer! Your health, parson! We haven't had our sport
+yet. We're going to have some first-rate sport. Oh, well! we haven't
+much show of birds. We shot for pleasure, and returned them to the
+proprietors. You're fond of game, parson! Ripton is a dead shot in
+what Cousin Austin calls the Kingdom of 'would-have-done' and
+'might-have-been.' Up went the birds, and cries Rip, 'I've forgotten
+to load!' Oh, ho!--Rip! some more claret--Do just leave that nose of
+yours alone.--Your health, Ripton Thompson! The birds hadn't the
+decency to wait for him, and so, parson, it's their fault, and not
+Rip's, you haven't a dozen brace at your feet. What have you been
+doing at home, Cousin Rady?"
+
+"Playing Hamlet, in the absence of the Prince of Denmark. The day
+without you, my dear boy, must be dull, you know."
+
+    "'He speaks: can I trust what he says is sincere?
+    There's an edge to his smile that cuts much like a sneer.'
+
+Sandoe's poems! You know the couplet, Mr. Rady. Why shouldn't I
+quote Sandoe? You know you like him, Rady. But, if you've missed me,
+I'm sorry. Rip and I have had a beautiful day. We've made new
+acquaintances. We've seen the world. I'm the monkey that has seen
+the world, and I'm going to tell you all about it. First, there's a
+gentleman who takes a rifle for a fowling-piece. Next, there's a
+farmer who warns everybody, gentleman and beggar, off his premises.
+Next, there's a tinker and a ploughman, who think that God is always
+fighting with the devil which shall command the kingdoms of the
+earth. The tinker's for God, and the ploughman"----
+
+"I'll drink your health, Ricky," said Adrian, interrupting.
+
+"Oh, I forgot, parson;--I mean no harm, Adrian. I'm only telling
+what I've heard."
+
+"No harm, my dear boy," returned Adrian. "I'm perfectly aware that
+Zoroaster is not dead. You have been listening to a common creed.
+Drink the Fire-worshippers, if you will."
+
+"Here's to Zoroaster, then!" cried Richard. "I say, Rippy! we'll
+drink the Fire-worshippers to-night, won't we?"
+
+A fearful conspiratorial frown, that would not have disgraced Guido
+Fawkes, was darted back from the plastic features of Master Ripton.
+
+Richard gave his lungs loud play.
+
+"Why, what did you say about Blaizes, Rippy? Didn't you say it was
+fun?"
+
+Another hideous and silencing frown was Ripton's answer. Adrian
+watched the innocent youths, and knew that there was talking under
+the table. "See," thought he, "this boy has tasted his first scraggy
+morsel of life to-day, and already he talks like an old stager, and
+has, if I mistake not, been acting too. My respected chief," he
+apostrophized Sir Austin, "combustibles are only the more dangerous
+for compression. This boy will be ravenous for Earth when he is let
+loose, and very soon make his share of it look as foolish as yonder
+game-pie!"--a prophecy Adrian kept to himself.
+
+Uncle Algernon shambled in to see his nephew before the supper was
+finished, and his more genial presence brought out a little of the
+plot.
+
+"Look here, uncle!" said Richard. "Would you let a churlish old
+brute of a farmer strike you without making him suffer for it?"
+
+"I fancy I should return the compliment, my lad," replied his uncle.
+
+"Of course you would! So would I. And he shall suffer for it." The
+boy looked savage, and his uncle patted him down.
+
+"I've boxed his son; I'll box him," said Richard, shouting for more
+wine.
+
+"What, boy! Is it old Blaize has been putting you up?"
+
+"Never mind, uncle!" The boy nodded mysteriously.
+
+Look there! Adrian read on Ripton's face, he says "never mind," and
+lets it out!
+
+"Did we beat to-day, uncle?"
+
+"Yes, boy; and we'd beat them any day they bowl fair. I'd beat them
+on one leg. There's only Natkins and Featherdene among them worth a
+farthing."
+
+"We beat!" cries Richard. "Then we'll have some more wine, and drink
+their healths."
+
+The bell was rung; wine ordered. Presently comes in heavy Benson, to
+say supplies are cut off. One bottle, and no more. The Captain
+whistled; Adrian shrugged.
+
+The bottle, however, was procured by Adrian subsequently. He liked
+studying intoxicated urchins.
+
+One subject was at Richard's heart, about which he was reserved in
+the midst of his riot. Too proud to inquire how his father had taken
+his absence, he burned to hear whether he was in disgrace. He led to
+it repeatedly, and it was constantly evaded by Algernon and Adrian.
+At last, when the boy declared a desire to wish his father
+good-night, Adrian had to tell him that he was to go straight to bed
+from the supper-table. Young Richard's face fell at that, and his
+gaiety forsook him. He marched to his room without another word.
+
+Adrian gave Sir Austin an able version of his son's behaviour and
+adventures; dwelling upon this sudden taciturnity when he heard of
+his father's resolution not to see him. The wise youth saw that his
+chief was mollified behind his moveless mask, and went to bed, and
+Horace, leaving Sir Austin in his study. Long hours the baronet sat
+alone. The house had not its usual influx of Feverels that day.
+Austin Wentworth was staying at Poer Hall, and had only come over
+for an hour. At midnight the house breathed sleep. Sir Austin put on
+his cloak and cap, and took the lamp to make his rounds. He
+apprehended nothing special, but with a mind never at rest he
+constituted himself the sentinel of Raynham. He passed the chamber
+where the Great-Aunt Grantley lay, who was to swell Richard's
+fortune, and so perform her chief business on earth. By her door he
+murmured, "Good creature! you sleep with a sense of duty done," and
+paced on, reflecting, "She has not made money a demon of discord,"
+and blessed her. He had his thoughts at Hippias's somnolent door,
+and to them the world might have subscribed.
+
+A monomaniac at large, watching over sane people in slumber! thinks
+Adrian Harley, as he hears Sir Austin's footfall, and truly that was
+a strange object to see.--Where is the fortress that has not one
+weak gate? where the man who is sound at each particular angle? Ay,
+meditates the recumbent cynic, more or less mad is not every
+mother's son? Favourable circumstances--good air, good company, two
+or three good rules rigidly adhered to--keep the world out of
+Bedlam. But, let the world fly into a passion, and is not Bedlam the
+safest abode for it?
+
+Sir Austin ascended the stairs, and bent his steps leisurely toward
+the chamber where his son was lying in the left wing of the Abbey.
+At the end of the gallery which led to it he discovered a dim light.
+Doubting it an illusion, Sir Austin accelerated his pace. This wing
+had aforetime a bad character. Notwithstanding what years had done
+to polish it into fair repute, the Raynham kitchen stuck to
+tradition, and preserved certain stories of ghosts seen there, that
+effectually blackened it in the susceptible minds of new housemaids
+and under-cooks, whose fears would not allow the sinner to wash his
+sins. Sir Austin had heard of the tales circulated by his domestics
+underground. He cherished his own belief, but discouraged theirs,
+and it was treason at Raynham to be caught traducing the left wing.
+As the baronet advanced, the fact of a light burning was clear to
+him. A slight descent brought him into the passage, and he beheld a
+poor human candle standing outside his son's chamber. At the same
+moment a door closed hastily. He entered Richard's room. The boy was
+absent. The bed was unpressed: no clothes about: nothing to show
+that he had been there that night. Sir Austin felt vaguely
+apprehensive. Has he gone to my room to await me? thought the
+father's heart. Something like a tear quivered in his arid eyes as
+he meditated and hoped this might be so. His own sleeping-room faced
+that of his son. He strode to it with a quick heart. It was empty.
+Alarm dislodged anger from his jealous heart, and dread of evil put
+a thousand questions to him that were answered in air. After pacing
+up and down his room he determined to go and ask the boy Thompson,
+as he called Ripton, what was known to him.
+
+The chamber assigned to Master Ripton Thompson was at the northern
+extremity of the passage, and overlooked Lobourne and the valley to
+the West. The bed stood between the window and the door. Sir Austin
+found the door ajar, and the interior dark. To his surprise, the boy
+Thompson's couch, as revealed by the rays of his lamp, was likewise
+vacant. He was turning back when he fancied he heard the sibilation
+of a whispering in the room. Sir Austin cloaked the lamp and trod
+silently toward the window. The heads of his son Richard and the boy
+Thompson were seen crouched against the glass, holding excited
+converse together. Sir Austin listened, but he listened to a
+language of which he possessed not the key. Their talk was of fire,
+and of delay: of expected agrarian astonishment: of a farmer's huge
+wrath: of violence exercised upon gentlemen, and of vengeance: talk
+that the boys jerked out by fits, and that came as broken links of a
+chain impossible to connect. But they awoke curiosity. The baronet
+condescended to play the spy upon his son.
+
+Over Lobourne and the valley lay black night and innumerable stars.
+
+"How jolly I feel!" exclaimed Ripton, inspired by claret; and then,
+after a luxurious pause--"I think that fellow has pocketed his
+guinea, and cut his lucky."
+
+Richard allowed a long minute to pass, during which the baronet
+waited anxiously for his voice, hardly recognizing it when he heard
+its altered tones.
+
+"If he has, I'll go; and I'll do it myself."
+
+"You would?" returned Master Ripton. "Well, I'm hanged!--I say, if
+you went to school, wouldn't you get into rows! Perhaps he hasn't
+found the place where the box was stuck in. I think he funks it. I
+almost wish you hadn't done it, upon my honour--eh? Look there! what
+was that? That looked like something.--I say! do you think we shall
+ever be found out?"
+
+Master Ripton intoned this abrupt interrogation very seriously.
+
+"I don't think about it," said Richard, all his faculties bent on
+signs from Lobourne.
+
+"Well, but," Ripton persisted, "suppose we are found out?"
+
+"If we are, I must pay for it."
+
+Sir Austin breathed the better for this reply. He was beginning to
+gather a clue to the dialogue. His son was engaged in a plot, and
+was, moreover, the leader of the plot. He listened for further
+enlightenment.
+
+"What was the fellow's name?" inquired Ripton.
+
+His companion answered, "Tom Bakewell."
+
+"I'll tell you what," continued Ripton. "You let it all clean out to
+your cousin and uncle at supper. How capital claret is with
+partridge-pie! What a lot I ate!--Didn't you see me frown?"
+
+The young sensualist was in an ecstasy of gratitude to his late
+refection, and the slightest word recalled him to it. Richard
+answered him--
+
+"Yes; and felt your kick. It doesn't matter. Rady's safe, and uncle
+never blabs."
+
+"Well, my plan is to keep it close. You're never safe if you
+don't.--I never drank much claret before," Ripton was off again.
+"Won't I now, though! claret's my wine. You know, it may come out
+any day, and then we're done for," he rather incongruously appended.
+
+Richard only took up the business-thread of his friend's rambling
+chatter, and answered--
+
+"You've got nothing to do with it, if we are."
+
+"Haven't I, though! I didn't stick in the box, but I'm an
+accomplice, that's clear. Besides," added Ripton, "do you think I
+should leave you to bear it all on your shoulders? I ain't that sort
+of chap, Ricky, I can tell you."
+
+Sir Austin thought more highly of the boy Thompson. Still it looked
+a detestable conspiracy, and the altered manner of his son impressed
+him strangely. He was not the boy of yesterday. To Sir Austin it
+seemed as if a gulf had suddenly opened between them. The boy had
+embarked, and was on the waters of life in his own vessel. It was as
+vain to call him back as to attempt to erase what Time has written
+with the Judgment Blood! This child, for whom he had prayed nightly
+in such a fervour and humbleness to God, the dangers were about him,
+the temptations thick on him, and the devil on board piloting. If a
+day had done so much, what would years do? Were prayers and all the
+watchfulness he had expended of no avail?
+
+A sensation of infinite melancholy overcame the poor gentleman--a
+thought that he was fighting with a fate in this beloved boy.
+
+He was half disposed to arrest the two conspirators on the spot, and
+make them confess, and absolve themselves; but it seemed to him
+better to keep an unseen eye over his son: Sir Austin's old system
+prevailed.
+
+Adrian characterized this system well, in saying that Sir Austin
+wished to be Providence to his son.
+
+If immeasurable love were perfect wisdom, one human being might
+almost impersonate Providence to another. Alas! love, divine as it
+is, can do no more than lighten the house it inhabits--must take its
+shape, sometimes intensify its narrowness--can spiritualize, but not
+expel, the old life-long lodgers above-stairs and below.
+
+Sir Austin decided to continue quiescent.
+
+The valley still lay black beneath the large autumnal stars, and the
+exclamations of the boys were becoming fevered and impatient.
+By-and-by one insisted that he had seen a twinkle. The direction he
+gave was out of their anticipations. Again the twinkle was
+announced. Both boys started to their feet. It was a twinkle in the
+right direction now.
+
+"He's done it!" cried Richard, in great heat. "Now you may say old
+Blaize'll soon be old Blazes, Rip. I hope he's asleep."
+
+"I'm sure he's snoring!--Look there! He's alight fast enough. He's
+dry. He'll burn.--I say," Ripton re-assumed the serious intonation,
+"do you think they'll ever suspect us?"
+
+"What if they do? We must brunt it."
+
+"Of course we will. But, I say! I wish you hadn't given them the
+scent, though. I like to look innocent. I can't when I know people
+suspect me. Lord! look there! Isn't it just beginning to flare up!"
+
+The farmer's grounds were indeed gradually standing out in sombre
+shadows.
+
+"I'll fetch my telescope," said Richard. Ripton, somehow not liking
+to be left alone, caught hold of him.
+
+"No; don't go and lose the best of it. Here, I'll throw open the
+window, and we can see."
+
+The window was flung open, and the boys instantly stretched half
+their bodies out of it; Ripton appearing to devour the rising flames
+with his mouth: Richard with his eyes.
+
+Opaque and statuesque stood the figure of the baronet behind them.
+The wind was low. Dense masses of smoke hung amid the darting snakes
+of fire, and a red malign light was on the neighbouring leafage. No
+figures could be seen. Apparently the flames had nothing to contend
+against, for they were making terrible strides into the darkness.
+
+"Oh!" shouted Richard, overcome by excitement, "if I had my
+telescope! We must have it! Let me go and fetch it! I will!"
+
+The boys struggled together, and Sir Austin stepped back. As he did
+so, a cry was heard in the passage. He hurried out, closed the
+chamber, and came upon little Clare lying senseless along the floor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ADRIAN PLIES HIS HOOK
+
+
+In the morning that followed this night, great gossip was
+interchanged between Raynham and Lobourne. The village told how
+Farmer Blaize, of Belthorpe Farm, had his rick feloniously set fire
+to; his stables had caught fire, himself had been all but roasted
+alive in the attempt to rescue his cattle, of which numbers had
+perished in the flames. Raynham counterbalanced arson with an
+authentic ghost seen by Miss Clare in the left wing of the
+Abbey--the ghost of a lady, dressed in deep mourning, a scar on her
+forehead, and a bloody handkerchief at her breast, frightful to
+behold! and no wonder the child was frightened out of her wits, and
+lay in a desperate State awaiting the arrival of the London doctors.
+It was added that the servants had all threatened to leave in a
+body, and that Sir Austin to appease them had promised to pull down
+the entire left wing, like a gentleman; for no decent creature, said
+Lobourne, could consent to live in a haunted house.
+
+Rumour for the nonce had a stronger spice of truth than usual. Poor
+little Clare lay ill, and the calamity that had befallen Farmer
+Blaize, as regards his rick, was not much exaggerated. Sir Austin
+caused an account of it to be given him at breakfast, and appeared
+so scrupulously anxious to hear the exact extent of injury sustained
+by the farmer that heavy Benson went down to inspect the scene. Mr.
+Benson returned, and, acting under Adrian's malicious advice, framed
+a formal report of the catastrophe, in which the farmer's breeches
+figured, and certain cooling applications to a part of the farmer's
+person. Sir Austin perused it without a smile. He took occasion to
+have it read out before the two boys, who listened very demurely, as
+to an ordinary newspaper incident; only when the report
+particularized the garments damaged, and the unwonted distressing
+position Farmer Blaize was reduced to in his bed, an indecorous fit
+of sneezing laid hold of Master Ripton Thompson, and Richard bit his
+lip and burst into loud laughter, Ripton joining him, lost to
+consequences.
+
+"I trust you feel for this poor man," said Sir Austin to his son,
+somewhat sternly. He saw no sign of feeling.
+
+It was a difficult task for Sir Austin to keep his old countenance
+toward the hope of Raynham, knowing him the accomplice-incendiary,
+and believing the deed to have been unprovoked and wanton. But he
+must do so, he knew, to let the boy have a fair trial against
+himself. Be it said, moreover, that the baronet's possession of his
+son's secret flattered him. It allowed him to act, and in a measure
+to feel, like Providence; enabled him to observe and provide for the
+movements of creatures in the dark. He therefore treated the boy as
+he commonly did, and Richard saw no change in his father to make him
+think he was suspected.
+
+The youngster's game was not so easy against Adrian. Adrian did not
+shoot or fish. Voluntarily he did nothing to work off the
+destructive nervous fluid, or whatever it may be, which is in man's
+nature; so that two culprit boys once in his power were not likely
+to taste the gentle hand of mercy, and Richard and Ripton paid for
+many a trout and partridge spared. At every minute of the day Ripton
+was thrown into sweats of suspicion that discovery was imminent, by
+some stray remark or message from Adrian. He was as a fish with the
+hook in his gills, mysteriously caught without having nibbled; and
+dive into what depths he would he was sensible of a summoning force
+that compelled him perpetually towards the gasping surface, which he
+seemed inevitably approaching when the dinner-bell sounded. There
+the talk was all of Farmer Blaize. If it dropped, Adrian revived it,
+and his caressing way with Ripton was just such as a keen sportsman
+feels toward the creature that has owned his skill, and is making
+its appearance for the world to acknowledge the same. Sir Austin saw
+the manoeuvres, and admired Adrian's shrewdness. But he had to
+check the young natural lawyer, for the effect of so much masked
+examination upon Richard was growing baneful. This fish also felt
+the hook in his gills, but this fish was more of a pike, and lay in
+different waters, where there were old stumps and black roots to
+wind about, and defy alike strong pulling and delicate handling. In
+other words, Richard showed symptoms of a disposition to take refuge
+in lies.
+
+"You know the grounds, my dear boy," Adrian observed to him. "Tell
+me; do you think it easy to get to the rick unperceived? I hear they
+suspect one of the farmer's turned-off hands."
+
+"I tell you I don't know the grounds," Richard sullenly replied.
+
+"Not?" Adrian counterfeited courteous astonishment. "I thought Mr.
+Thompson said you were over there yesterday?"
+
+Ripton, glad to speak a truth, hurriedly assured Adrian that it was
+not he had said so.
+
+"Not? You had good sport, gentlemen, hadn't you?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" mumbled the wretched victims, reddening as they
+remembered, in Adrian's slightly drawled rusticity of tone, Farmer
+Blaize's first address to them.
+
+"I suppose you were among the Fire-worshippers last night, too?"
+persisted Adrian. "In some countries, I hear, they manage their best
+sport at night-time, and beat up for game with torches. It must be a
+fine sight. After all, the country would be dull if we hadn't a rip
+here and there to treat us to a little conflagration."
+
+"A rip!" laughed Richard, to his friend's disgust and alarm at his
+daring. "You don't mean this Rip, do you?"
+
+"Mr. Thompson fire a rick? I should as soon suspect you, my dear
+boy.--You are aware, young gentlemen, that it is rather a serious
+thing--eh? In this country, you know, the landlord has always been
+the pet of the Laws. By the way," Adrian continued, as if diverging
+to another topic, "you met two gentlemen of the road in your
+explorations yesterday, Magians. Now, if I were a magistrate of the
+county, like Sir Miles Papworth, my suspicions would light upon
+those gentlemen. A tinker and a ploughman, I think you said, Mr.
+Thompson. Not? Well, say two ploughmen."
+
+"More likely two tinkers," said Richard.
+
+"Oh! if you wish to exclude the ploughman--was he out of employ?"
+
+Ripton, with Adrian's eyes inveterately fixed on him, stammered an
+affirmative.
+
+"The tinker, or the ploughman?"
+
+"The ploughm--" Ingenuous Ripton looking about, as if to aid himself
+whenever he was able to speak the truth, beheld Richard's face
+blackening at him, and swallowed back half the word.
+
+"The ploughman!" Adrian took him up cheerily. "Then we have here a
+ploughman out of employ. Given a ploughman out of employ, and a rick
+burnt. The burning of a rick is an act of vengeance, and a ploughman
+out of employ is a vengeful animal. The rick and the ploughman are
+advancing to a juxtaposition. Motive being established, we have only
+to prove their proximity at a certain hour, and our ploughman
+voyages beyond seas."
+
+"Is it transportation for rick-burning?" inquired Ripton aghast.
+
+Adrian spoke solemnly: "They shave your head. You are manacled. Your
+diet is sour bread and cheese-parings. You work in strings of
+twenties and thirties. ARSON is branded on your backs in an enormous
+A. Theological works are the sole literary recreation of the
+well-conducted and deserving. Consider the fate of this poor fellow,
+and what an act of vengeance brings him to! Do you know his name?"
+
+"How should I know his name?" said Richard, with an assumption of
+innocence painful to see.
+
+Sir Austin remarked that no doubt it would soon be known, and Adrian
+perceived that he was to quiet his line, marvelling a little at the
+baronet's blindness to what was so clear. He would not tell, for
+that would ruin his future influence with Richard; still he wanted
+some present credit for his discernment and devotion. The boys got
+away from dinner, and, after deep consultation, agreed upon a course
+of conduct, which was to commiserate Farmer Blaize loudly, and make
+themselves look as much like the public as it was possible for two
+young malefactors to look, one of whom already felt Adrian's
+enormous A devouring his back with the fierceness of the Promethean
+eagle, and isolating him for ever from mankind. Adrian relished
+their novel tactics sharply, and led them to lengths of lamentation
+for Farmer Blaize. Do what they might, the hook was in their gills.
+The farmer's whip had reduced them to bodily contortions: these were
+decorous compared with the spiritual writhings they had to perform
+under Adrian's manipulation. Ripton was fast becoming a coward, and
+Richard a liar, when next morning Austin Wentworth came over from
+Poer Hall bringing news that one Mr. Thomas Bakewell, yeoman, had
+been arrested on suspicion of the crime of Arson and lodged in jail,
+awaiting the magisterial pleasure of Sir Miles Papworth. Austin's
+eye rested on Richard as he spoke these terrible tidings. The hope
+of Raynham returned his look, perfectly calm, and had, moreover,
+the presence of mind not to look at Ripton.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+JUVENILE STRATAGEMS
+
+
+As soon as they could escape, the boys got away together into an
+obscure corner of the park, and there took counsel of their
+extremity.
+
+"Whatever shall we do now?" asked Ripton of his leader.
+
+Scorpion girt with fire was never in a more terrible prison-house
+than poor Ripton, around whom the raging element he had assisted to
+create seemed to be drawing momentary narrower circles.
+
+"There's only one chance," said Richard, coming to a dead halt, and
+folding his arms resolutely.
+
+His comrade inquired with the utmost eagerness what that chance
+might be.
+
+Richard fixed his eyes on a flint, and replied: "We must rescue that
+fellow from jail."
+
+Ripton gazed at his leader, and fell back with astonishment. "My
+dear Ricky! but how are we to do it?"
+
+Richard, still perusing his flint, replied: "We must manage to get a
+file in to him and a rope. It can be done, I tell you. I don't care
+what I pay. I don't care what I do. He must be got out."
+
+"Bother that old Blaize!" exclaimed Ripton, taking off his cap to
+wipe his frenzied forehead, and brought down his friend's reproof.
+
+"Never mind old Blaize now. Talk about letting it out! Look at you.
+I'm ashamed of you. You talk about Robin Hood and King Richard! Why,
+you haven't an atom of courage. Why, you let it out every second of
+the day. Whenever Rady begins speaking you start; I can see the
+perspiration rolling down you. Are you afraid?--And then you
+contradict yourself. You never keep to one story. Now, follow me. We
+must risk everything to get him out. Mind that! And keep out of
+Adrian's way as much as you can. And keep to one story."
+
+With these sage directions the young leader marched his
+companion-culprit down to inspect the jail where Tom Bakewell lay
+groaning over the results of the super-mundane conflict, and the
+victim of it that he was.
+
+In Lobourne Austin Wentworth had the reputation of the poor man's
+friend; a title he earned more largely ere he went to the reward God
+alone can give to that supreme virtue. Dame Bakewell, the mother of
+Tom, on hearing of her son's arrest, had run to comfort him and
+render him what help she could; but this was only sighs and tears,
+and, oh deary me! which only perplexed poor Tom, who bade her leave
+an unlucky chap to his fate, and not make himself a thundering
+villain. Whereat the dame begged him to take heart, and he should
+have a true comforter. "And though it's a gentleman that's coming to
+you, Tom--for he never refuses a poor body," said Mrs. Bakewell,
+"it's a true Christian, Tom! and the Lord knows if the sight of him
+mayn't be the saving of you, for he's light to look on, and a sermon
+to listen to, he is!"
+
+Tom was not prepossessed by the prospect of a sermon, and looked a
+sullen dog enough when Austin entered his cell. He was surprised at
+the end of half-an-hour to find himself engaged in man-to-man
+conversation with a gentleman and a Christian. When Austin rose to
+go, Tom begged permission to shake his hand.
+
+"Take and tell young master up at the Abbey that I an't the chap to
+peach. He'll know. He's a young gentleman as'll make any man do as
+he wants 'em! He's a mortal wild young gentleman! And I'm a Ass!
+That's where 'tis. But I an't a blackguard. Tell him that, sir!"
+
+This was how it came that Austin eyed young Richard seriously while
+he told the news at Raynham. The boy was shy of Austin more than of
+Adrian. Why, he did not know; but he made it a hard task for Austin
+to catch him alone, and turned sulky that instant. Austin was not
+clever like Adrian: he seldom divined other people's ideas, and
+always went the direct road to his object; so instead of beating
+about and setting the boy on the alert at all points, crammed to the
+muzzle with lies, he just said, "Tom Bakewell told me to let you
+know he does not intend to peach on you," and left him.
+
+Richard repeated the intelligence to Ripton, who cried aloud that
+Tom was a brick.
+
+"He shan't suffer for it," said Richard, and pondered on a thicker
+rope and sharper file.
+
+"But will your cousin tell?" was Ripton's reflection.
+
+"He!" Richard's lip expressed contempt. "A ploughman refuses to
+peach, and you ask if one of our family will?"
+
+Ripton stood for the twentieth time reproved on this point.
+
+The boys had examined the outer walls of the jail, and arrived at
+the conclusion that Tom's escape might be managed if Tom had spirit,
+and the rope and file could be anyway reached to him. But to do
+this, somebody must gain admittance to his cell, and who was to be
+taken into their confidence?
+
+"Try your cousin," Ripton suggested, after much debate.
+
+Richard, smiling, wished to know if he meant Adrian.
+
+"No, no!" Ripton hurriedly reassured him. "Austin."
+
+The same idea was knocking at Richard's head.
+
+"Let's get the rope and file first," said he, and to Bursley they
+went for those implements to defeat the law, Ripton procuring the
+file at one shop and Richard the rope at another, with such masterly
+cunning did they lay their measures for the avoidance of every
+possible chance of detection. And better to assure this, in a wood
+outside Bursley Richard stripped to his shirt and wound the rope
+round his body, tasting the tortures of anchorites and penitential
+friars, that nothing should be risked to make Tom's escape a
+certainty. Sir Austin saw the marks at night as his son lay asleep,
+through the half-opened folds of his bed-gown.
+
+It was a severe stroke when, after all their stratagems and trouble,
+Austin Wentworth refused the office the boys had zealously designed
+for him. Time pressed. In a few days poor Tom would have to face the
+redoubtable Sir Miles, and get committed, for rumours of
+overwhelming evidence to convict him were rife about Lobourne, and
+Farmer Blaize's wrath was unappeasable. Again and again young
+Richard begged his cousin not to see him disgraced, and to help him
+in this extremity. Austin smiled on him.
+
+"My dear Ricky," said he, "there are two ways of getting out of a
+scrape: a long way and a short way. When you've tried the roundabout
+method, and failed, come to me, and I'll show you the straight
+route."
+
+Richard was too entirely bent upon the roundabout method to consider
+this advice more than empty words, and only ground his teeth at
+Austin's unkind refusal.
+
+He imparted to Ripton, at the eleventh hour, that they must do it
+themselves, to which Ripton heavily assented.
+
+On the day preceding poor Tom's doomed appearance before the
+magistrate, Dame Bakewell had an interview with Austin, who went to
+Raynham immediately, and sought Adrian's counsel upon what was to be
+done. Homeric laughter and nothing else could be got out of Adrian
+when he heard of the doings of these desperate boys: how they had
+entered Dame Bakewell's smallest of retail shops, and purchased tea,
+sugar, candles, and comfits of every description, till the shop was
+clear of customers: how they had then hurried her into her little
+back-parlour, where Richard had torn open his shirt and revealed the
+coils of rope, and Ripton displayed the point of a file from a
+serpentine recess in his jacket: how they had then told the
+astonished woman that the rope she saw and the file she saw were
+instruments for the liberation of her son; that there existed no
+other means on earth to save him, they, the boys, having
+unsuccessfully attempted all: how upon that Richard had tried with
+the utmost earnestness to persuade her to disrobe and wind the rope
+round her own person: and Ripton had aired his eloquence to induce
+her to secrete the file: how, when she resolutely objected to the
+rope, both boys began backing the file, and in an evil hour, she
+feared, said Dame Bakewell, she had rewarded the gracious permission
+given her by Sir Miles Papworth to visit her son, by tempting Tom to
+file the Law. Though, thanks be to the Lord! Dame Bakewell added,
+Tom had turned up his nose at the file, and so she had told young
+Master Richard, who swore very bad for a young gentleman.
+
+"Boys are like monkeys," remarked Adrian, at the close of his
+explosions, "the gravest actors of farcical nonsense that the world
+possesses. May I never be where there are no boys! A couple of boys
+left to themselves will furnish richer fun than any troop of trained
+comedians. No: no Art arrives at the artlessness of nature in
+matters of comedy. You can't simulate the ape. Your antics are dull.
+They haven't the charming inconsequence of the natural animal. Look
+at these two! Think of the shifts they are put to all day long! They
+know I know all about it, and yet their serenity of innocence is all
+but unruffled in my presence. You're sorry to think about the end of
+the business, Austin? So am I! I dread the idea of the curtain going
+down. Besides, it will do Ricky a world of good. A practical lesson
+is the best lesson."
+
+"Sinks deepest," said Austin, "but whether he learns good or evil
+from it is the question at stake."
+
+Adrian stretched his length at ease.
+
+"This will be his first nibble at experience, old Time's fruit, hateful
+to the palate of youth! for which season only hath it any nourishment!
+Experience! You know Coleridge's capital simile?--Mournful you call
+it? Well! all wisdom is mournful. 'Tis therefore, coz, that the wise do
+love the Comic Muse. Their own high food would kill them. You shall
+find great poets, rare philosophers, night after night on the broad
+grin before a row of yellow lights and mouthing masks. Why? Because
+all's dark at home. The stage is the pastime of great minds. That's
+how it comes that the stage is now down. An age of rampant little
+minds, my dear Austin! How I hate that cant of yours about an Age of
+Work--you, and your Mortons, and your parsons Brawnley, rank radicals
+all of you, base materialists! What does Diaper Sandoe sing of your
+Age of Work? Listen!
+
+         'An Age of petty tit for tat,
+           An Age of busy gabble:
+         An age that's like a brewer's vat,
+           Fermenting for the rabble!
+
+         'An Age that's chaste in Love, but lax
+           To virtuous abuses:
+         Whose gentlemen and ladies wax
+           Too dainty for their uses.
+
+         'An Age that drives an Iron Horse,
+           Of Time and Space defiant;
+         Exulting in a Giant's Force,
+           And trembling at the Giant.
+
+         'An Age of Quaker hue and cut,
+           By Mammon misbegotten;
+         See the mad Hamlet mouth and strut!
+           And mark the Kings of Cotton!
+
+         'From this unrest, lo, early wreck'd,
+           A Future staggers crazy,
+         Ophelia of the Ages, deck'd
+           With woeful weed and daisy!'"
+
+Murmuring, "Get your parson Brawnley to answer that!" Adrian changed
+the resting-place of a leg, and smiled. The AGE was an old
+battle-field between him and Austin.
+
+"My parson Brawnley, as you call him, has answered it," said Austin,
+"not by hoping his best, which would probably leave the Age to go
+mad to your satisfaction, but by doing it. And he has and will
+answer your Diaper Sandoe in better verse, as he confutes him in a
+better life."
+
+"You don't see Sandoe's depth," Adrian replied. "Consider that
+phrase, 'Ophelia of the Ages'! Is not Brawnley, like a dozen other
+leading spirits--I think that's your term--just the metaphysical
+Hamlet to drive her mad? She, poor maid! asks for marriage and
+smiling babes, while my lord lover stands questioning the Infinite,
+and rants to the Impalpable."
+
+Austin laughed. "Marriage and smiling babes she would have in
+abundance, if Brawnley legislated. Wait till you know him. He will
+be over at Poer Hall shortly, and you will see what a Man of the Age
+means. But now, pray, consult with me about these boys."
+
+"Oh, those boys!" Adrian tossed a hand. "Are there boys of the Age
+as well as men? Not? Then boys are better than men: boys are for all
+Ages. What do you think, Austin? They've been studying Latude's
+Escape. I found the book open in Ricky's room, on the top of
+Jonathan Wild. Jonathan preserved the secrets of his profession, and
+taught them nothing. So they're going to make a Latude of Mr. Tom
+Bakewell. He's to be Bastille Bakewell, whether he will or no. Let
+them. Let the wild colt run free! We can't help them. We can only
+look on. We should spoil the play."
+
+Adrian always made a point of feeding the fretful beast Impatience
+with pleasantries--a not congenial diet; and Austin, the most
+patient of human beings, began to lose his self-control.
+
+"You talk as if Time belonged to you, Adrian. We have but a few
+hours left us. Work first, and joke afterwards. The boy's fate is
+being decided now."
+
+"So is everybody's, my dear Austin!" yawned the epicurean.
+
+"Yes, but this boy is at present under our guardianship--under yours
+especially."
+
+"Not yet! not yet!" Adrian interjected languidly. "No getting into
+scrapes when I have him. The leash, young hound! the collar, young
+colt! I'm perfectly irresponsible at present."
+
+"You may have something different to deal with when you are
+responsible, if you think that."
+
+"I take my young prince as I find him, coz: a Julian, or a
+Caracalla: a Constantine, or a Nero. Then, if he will play the
+fiddle to a conflagration, he shall play it well: if he must be a
+disputatious apostate, at any rate he shall understand logic and
+men, and have the habit of saying his prayers."
+
+"Then you leave me to act alone?" said Austin, rising.
+
+"Without a single curb!" Adrian gesticulated an acquiesced
+withdrawal. "I'm sure you would not, still more certain you cannot,
+do harm. And be mindful of my prophetic words: Whatever's done, old
+Blaize will have to be bought off. There's the affair settled at
+once. I suppose I must go to the chief to-night and settle it
+myself. We can't see this poor devil condemned, though it's nonsense
+to talk of a boy being the prime instigator."
+
+Austin cast an eye at the complacent languor of the wise youth, his
+cousin, and the little that he knew of his fellows told him he might
+talk for ever here, and not be comprehended. The wise youth's two
+ears were stuffed with his own wisdom. One evil only Adrian dreaded,
+it was clear--the action of the law.
+
+As he was moving away, Adrian called out to him, "Stop, Austin!
+There! don't be anxious! You invariably take the glum side. I've
+done something. Never mind what. If you go down to Belthorpe, be
+civil, but not obsequious. You remember the tactics of Scipio
+Africanus against the Punic elephants? Well, don't say a word--in
+thine ear, coz: I've turned Master Blaize's elephants. If they
+charge, 'twill be a feint, and back to the destruction of his
+serried ranks! You understand. Not? Well, 'tis as well. Only, let
+none say that I sleep. If I must see him to-night, I go down knowing
+he has not got us in his power." The wise youth yawned, and
+stretched out a hand for any book that might be within his reach.
+Austin left him to look about the grounds for Richard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+DAPHNE'S BOWER
+
+
+A little laurel-shaded temple of white marble looked out on the
+river from a knoll bordering the Raynham beechwoods, and was dubbed
+by Adrian Daphne's Bower. To this spot Richard had retired, and
+there Austin found him with his head buried in his hands, a picture
+of desperation, whose last shift has been defeated. He allowed
+Austin to greet him and sit by him without lifting his head. Perhaps
+his eyes were not presentable.
+
+"Where's your friend?" Austin began.
+
+"Gone!" was the answer, sounding cavernous from behind hair and
+fingers. An explanation presently followed, that a summons had come
+for him in the morning from Mr. Thompson; and that Mr. Ripton had
+departed against his will.
+
+In fact, Ripton had protested that he would defy his parent and
+remain by his friend in the hour of adversity and at the post of
+danger. Sir Austin signified his opinion that a boy should obey his
+parent, by giving orders to Benson for Ripton's box to be packed and
+ready before noon; and Ripton's alacrity in taking the baronet's
+view of filial duty was as little feigned as his offer to Richard
+to throw filial duty to the winds. He rejoiced that the Fates had
+agreed to remove him from the very hot neighbourhood of Lobourne,
+while he grieved, like an honest lad, to see his comrade left to
+face calamity alone. The boys parted amicably, as they could hardly
+fail to do, when Ripton had sworn fealty to the Feverels with a
+warmth that made him declare himself bond, and due to appear at any
+stated hour and at any stated place to fight all the farmers in
+England, on a mandate from the heir of the house.
+
+"So you're left alone," said Austin, contemplating the boy's shapely
+head. "I'm glad of it. We never know what's in us till we stand by
+ourselves."
+
+There appeared to be no answer forthcoming. Vanity, however, replied
+at last, "He wasn't much support."
+
+"Remember his good points now he's gone, Ricky."
+
+"Oh! he was staunch," the boy grumbled.
+
+"And a staunch friend is not always to be found. Now, have you tried
+your own way of rectifying this business, Ricky?"
+
+"I have done everything."
+
+"And failed!"
+
+There was a pause, and then the deep-toned evasion--
+
+"Tom Bakewell's a coward!"
+
+"I suppose, poor fellow," said Austin, in his kind way, "he doesn't
+want to get into a deeper mess. I don't think he's a coward."
+
+"He is a coward," cried Richard. "Do you think if I had a file I
+would stay in prison? I'd be out the first night! And he might have
+had the rope, too--a rope thick enough for a couple of men his size
+and weight. Ripton and I and Ned Markham swung on it for an hour,
+and it didn't give way. He's a coward, and deserves his fate. I've
+no compassion for a coward."
+
+"Nor I much," said Austin.
+
+Richard had raised his head in the heat of his denunciation of poor
+Tom. He would have hidden it had he known the thought in Austin's
+clear eyes while he faced them.
+
+"I never met a coward myself," Austin continued. "I have heard of
+one or two. One let an innocent man die for him."
+
+"How base!" exclaimed the boy.
+
+"Yes, it was bad," Austin acquiesced.
+
+"Bad!" Richard scorned the poor contempt. "How I would have spurned
+him! He was a coward!"
+
+"I believe he pleaded the feelings of his family in his excuse, and
+tried every means to get the man off. I have read also in the
+confessions of a celebrated philosopher, that in his youth he
+committed some act of pilfering, and accused a young servant-girl of
+his own theft, who was condemned and dismissed for it, pardoning her
+guilty accuser."
+
+"What a coward!" shouted Richard. "And he confessed it publicly?"
+
+"You may read it yourself."
+
+"He actually wrote it down, and printed it?"
+
+"You have the book in your father's library. Would you have done so
+much?"
+
+Richard faltered. No! he admitted that he never could have told
+people.
+
+"Then who is to call that man a coward?" said Austin. "He expiated
+his cowardice as all who give way in moments of weakness, and are
+not cowards, must do. The coward chooses to think 'God does not see.
+I shall escape.' He who is not a coward, and has succumbed, knows
+that God has seen all, and it is not so hard a task for him to make
+his heart bare to the world. Worse, I should fancy it, to know
+myself an impostor when men praised me."
+
+Young Richard's eyes were wandering on Austin's gravely cheerful
+face. A keen intentness suddenly fixed them, and he dropped his
+head.
+
+"So I think you're wrong, Ricky, in calling this poor Tom a coward
+because he refuses to try your means of escape," Austin resumed. "A
+coward hardly objects to drag in his accomplice. And, where the
+person involved belongs to a great family, it seems to me that for a
+poor plough-lad to volunteer not to do so speaks him anything but a
+coward."
+
+Richard was dumb. Altogether to surrender his rope and file was a
+fearful sacrifice, after all the time, trepidation, and study he had
+spent on those two saving instruments. If he avowed Tom's manly
+behaviour, Richard Feverel was in a totally new position. Whereas,
+by keeping Tom a coward, Richard Feverel was the injured one, and
+to seem injured is always a luxury; sometimes a necessity, whether
+among boys or men.
+
+In Austin the Magian conflict would not have lasted long. He had but
+a blind notion of the fierceness with which it raged in young
+Richard. Happily for the boy, Austin was not a preacher. A single
+instance, a cant phrase, a fatherly manner, might have wrecked him,
+by arousing ancient or latent opposition. The born preacher we feel
+instinctively to be our foe. He may do some good to the wretches
+that have been struck down and lie gasping on the battlefield: he
+rouses antagonism in the strong. Richard's nature, left to itself,
+wanted little more than an indication of the proper track, and when
+he said, "Tell me what I can do, Austin?" he had fought the best
+half of the battle. His voice was subdued. Austin put his hand on
+the boy's shoulder.
+
+"You must go down to Farmer Blaize."
+
+"Well!" said Richard, sullenly divining the deed of penance.
+
+"You'll know what to say to him when you're there."
+
+The boy bit his lip and frowned. "Ask a favour of that big brute,
+Austin? I can't!"
+
+"Just tell him the whole case, and that you don't intend to stand by
+and let the poor fellow suffer without a friend to help him out of
+his scrape."
+
+"But, Austin," the boy pleaded, "I shall have to ask him to help off
+Tom Bakewell! How can I ask him, when I hate him?"
+
+Austin bade him go, and think nothing of the consequences till he
+got there.
+
+Richard groaned in soul.
+
+"You've no pride, Austin."
+
+"Perhaps not."
+
+"You don't know what it is to ask a favour of a brute you hate."
+
+Richard stuck to that view of the case, and stuck to it the faster
+the more imperatively the urgency of a movement dawned upon him.
+
+"Why," continued the boy, "I shall hardly be able to keep my fists
+off him!"
+
+"Surely you've punished him enough, boy!" said Austin.
+
+"He struck me!" Richard's lip quivered. "He dared not come at me
+with his hands. He struck me with a whip. He'll be telling everybody
+that he horsewhipped me, and that I went down and begged his pardon.
+Begged his pardon! A Feverel beg his pardon! Oh, if I had my will!"
+
+"The man earns his bread, Ricky. You poached on his grounds. He
+turned you off, and you fired his rick."
+
+"And I'll pay him for his loss. And I won't do any more."
+
+"Because you won't ask a favour of him?"
+
+"No! I will not ask a favour of him."
+
+Austin looked at the boy steadily. "You prefer to receive a favour
+from poor Tom Bakewell?"
+
+At Austin's enunciation of this obverse view of the matter Richard
+raised his brow. Dimly a new light broke in upon him. "Favour from
+Tom Bakewell, the ploughman? How do you mean, Austin?"
+
+"To save yourself an unpleasantness you permit a country lad to
+sacrifice himself for you? I confess I should not have so much
+pride."
+
+"Pride!" shouted Richard, stung by the taunt, and set his sight hard
+at the blue ridges of the hills.
+
+Not knowing for the moment what else to do, Austin drew a picture of
+Tom in prison, and repeated Tom's volunteer statement. The picture,
+though his intentions were far from designing it so, had to Richard,
+whose perception of humour was infinitely keener, a horrible
+chaw-bacon smack about it. Visions of a grinning lout, open from ear
+to ear, unkempt, coarse, splay-footed, rose before him and afflicted
+him with the strangest sensations of disgust and comicality, mixed
+up with pity and remorse--a sort of twisted pathos. There lay Tom;
+hob-nail Tom! a bacon-munching, reckless, beer-swilling animal! and
+yet a man; a dear brave human heart notwithstanding; capable of
+devotion and unselfishness. The boy's better spirit was touched, and
+it kindled his imagination to realize the abject figure of poor
+clodpole Tom, and surround it with a halo of mournful light. His
+soul was alive. Feelings he had never known streamed in upon him as
+from an ethereal casement, an unwonted tenderness, an embracing
+humour, a consciousness of some ineffable glory, an irradiation of
+the features of humanity. All this was in the bosom of the boy, and
+through it all the vision of an actual hob-nail Tom, coarse,
+unkempt, open from ear to ear; whose presence was a finger of shame
+to him and an oppression of clodpole; yet toward whom he felt just
+then a loving-kindness beyond what he felt for any living creature.
+He laughed at him, and wept over him. He prized him, while he shrank
+from him. It was a genial strife of the angel in him with
+constituents less divine; but the angel was uppermost and led the
+van--extinguished loathing, humanized laughter, transfigured
+pride--pride that would persistently contemplate the corduroys of
+gaping Tom, and cry to Richard, in the very tone of Adrian's ironic
+voice, "Behold your benefactor!"
+
+Austin sat by the boy, unaware of the sublimer tumult he had
+stirred. Little of it was perceptible in Richard's countenance. The
+lines of his mouth were slightly drawn; his eyes hard set into the
+distance. He remained thus many minutes. Finally he jumped to his
+legs, saying, "I'll go at once to old Blaize and tell him."
+
+Austin grasped his hand, and together they issued out of Daphne's
+Bower, in the direction of Lobourne.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE BITTER CUP
+
+
+Farmer Blaize was not so astonished at the visit of Richard Feverel
+as that young gentleman expected him to be. The farmer, seated in
+his easy-chair in the little low-roofed parlour of an old-fashioned
+farm-house, with a long clay pipe on the table at his elbow, and a
+veteran pointer at his feet, had already given audience to three
+distinguished members of the Feverel blood, who had come separately,
+according to their accustomed secretiveness, and with one object. In
+the morning it was Sir Austin himself. Shortly after his departure,
+arrived Austin Wentworth; close on his heels, Algernon, known about
+Lobourne as the Captain, popular wherever he was known. Farmer
+Blaize reclined in considerable elation. He had brought these great
+people to a pretty low pitch. He had welcomed them hospitably, as a
+British yeoman should; but not budged a foot in his demands: not to
+the baronet: not to the Captain: not to good young Mr. Wentworth.
+For Farmer Blaize was a solid Englishman; and, on hearing from the
+baronet a frank confession of the hold he had on the family, he
+determined to tighten his hold, and only relax it in exchange for
+tangible advantages--compensation to his pocket, his wounded person,
+and his still more wounded sentiments: the total indemnity being, in
+round figures, three hundred pounds, and a spoken apology from the
+prime offender, young Mister Richard. Even then there was a
+reservation. Provided, the farmer said, nobody had been tampering
+with any of his witnesses. In that case Farmer Blaize declared the
+money might go, and he would transport Tom Bakewell, as he had sworn
+he would. And it goes hard, too, with an accomplice, by law, added
+the farmer, knocking the ashes leisurely out of his pipe. He had no
+wish to bring any disgrace anywhere; he respected the inmates of
+Raynham Abbey, as in duty bound; he should be sorry to see them in
+trouble. Only no tampering with his witnesses. He was a man for Law.
+Rank was much: money was much: but Law was more. In this country Law
+was above the sovereign. To tamper with the Law was treason to the
+realm.
+
+"I come to you direct," the baronet explained. "I tell you candidly
+in what way I discovered my son to be mixed up in this miserable
+affair. I promise you indemnity for your loss, and an apology that
+shall, I trust, satisfy your feelings, assuring you that to tamper
+with witnesses is not the province of a Feverel. All I ask of you in
+return is, not to press the prosecution. At present it rests with
+you. I am bound to do all that lies in my power for this imprisoned
+man. How and wherefore my son was prompted to suggest, or assist in,
+such an act, I cannot explain, for I do not know."
+
+"Hum!" said the farmer. "I think I do."
+
+"You know the cause?" Sir Austin stared. "I beg you to confide it to
+me."
+
+"'Least, I can pretty nigh neighbour it with a guess," said the
+farmer. "We an't good friends, Sir Austin, me and your son, just
+now--not to say cordial. I, ye see, Sir Austin, I'm a man as don't
+like young gentlemen a-poachin' on his grounds without his
+permission,--in special when birds is plentiful on their own. It
+appear he do like it. Consequently I has to flick this whip--as them
+fellers at the races: All in this 'ere Ring's mine! as much as to
+say; and who's been hit, he's had fair warnin'. I'm sorry for't, but
+that's just the case."
+
+Sir Austin retired to communicate with his son, when he should find
+him.
+
+Algernon's interview passed off in ale and promises. He also assured
+Farmer Blaize that no Feverel could be affected by his proviso.
+
+No less did Austin Wentworth. The farmer was satisfied.
+
+"Money's safe, I know," said he; "now for the 'pology!" and Farmer
+Blaize thrust his legs further out, and his head further back.
+
+The farmer naturally reflected that the three separate visits had
+been conspired together. Still the baronet's frankness, and the
+baronet's not having reserved himself for the third and final
+charge, puzzled him. He was considering whether they were a deep, or
+a shallow lot, when young Richard was announced.
+
+A pretty little girl with the roses of thirteen springs in her
+cheeks, and abundant beautiful bright tresses, tripped before the
+boy, and loitered shyly by the farmer's armchair to steal a look at
+the handsome new-comer. She was introduced to Richard as the
+farmer's niece, Lucy Desborough, the daughter of a lieutenant in the
+Royal Navy, and, what was better, though the farmer did not
+pronounce it so loudly, a real good girl.
+
+Neither the excellence of her character, nor her rank in life,
+tempted Richard to inspect the little lady. He made an awkward bow,
+and sat down.
+
+The farmer's eyes twinkled. "Her father," he continued, "fought and
+fell for his coontry. A man as fights for's coontry's a right to
+hould up his head--ay! with any in the land. Desb'roughs o' Dorset!
+d'ye know that family, Master Feverel?"
+
+Richard did not know them, and, by his air, did not desire to become
+acquainted with any offshoot of that family.
+
+"She can make puddens and pies," the farmer went on, regardless of
+his auditor's gloom. "She's a lady, as good as the best of 'em. I
+don't care about their being Catholics--the Desb'roughs o' Dorset
+are gentlemen. And she's good for the pianer, too! She strums to me
+of evenin's. I'm for the old tunes: she's for the new. Gal-like!
+While she's with me she shall be taught things use'l. She can
+parley-voo a good 'un and foot it, as it goes; been in France a
+couple of year. I prefer the singin' of 't to the talkin' of 't.
+Come, Luce! toon up--eh?--Ye wun't? That song about the
+Viffendeer--a female"--Farmer Blaize volunteered the translation of
+the title--"who wears the--you guess what! and marches along with
+the French sojers: a pretty brazen bit o' goods, I sh'd fancy."
+
+Mademoiselle Lucy corrected her uncle's French, but objected to do
+more. The handsome cross boy had almost taken away her voice for
+speech, as it was, and sing in his company she could not; so she
+stood, a hand on her uncle's chair to stay herself from falling,
+while she wriggled a dozen various shapes of refusal, and shook her
+head at the farmer with fixed eyes.
+
+"Aha!" laughed the farmer, dismissing her, "they soon learn the
+difference 'twixt the young 'un and the old 'un. Go along, Luce! and
+learn yer lessons for to-morrow."
+
+Reluctantly the daughter of the Royal Navy glided away. Her uncle's
+head followed her to the door, where she dallied to catch a last
+impression of the young stranger's lowering face, and darted
+through.
+
+Farmer Blaize laughed and chuckled. "She an't so fond of her uncle
+as that, every day! Not that she an't a good nurse--the kindest
+little soul you'd meet of a winter's walk! She'll read t' ye, and
+make drinks, and sing, too, if ye likes it, and she won't be tired.
+A obstinate good 'un, she be! Bless her!"
+
+The farmer may have designed, by these eulogies of his niece, to
+give his visitor time to recover his composure, and establish a
+common topic. His diversion only irritated and confused our
+shame-eaten youth. Richard's intention had been to come to the
+farmer's threshold: to summon the farmer thither, and in a loud and
+haughty tone then and there to take upon himself the whole burden
+of the charge against Tom Bakewell. He had strayed, during his
+passage to Belthorpe, somewhat back to his old nature; and his being
+compelled to enter the house of his enemy, sit in his chair, and
+endure an introduction to his family, was more than he bargained
+for. He commenced blinking hard in preparation for the horrible dose
+to which delay and the farmer's cordiality added inconceivable
+bitters. Farmer Blaize was quite at his ease; nowise in a hurry. He
+spoke of the weather and the harvest: of recent doings up at the
+Abbey: glanced over that year's cricketing; hoped that no future
+Feverel would lose a leg to the game. Richard saw and heard Arson in
+it all. He blinked harder as he neared the cup. In a moment of
+silence, he seized it with a gasp.
+
+"Mr. Blaize! I have come to tell you that I am the person who set
+fire to your rick the other night."
+
+An odd contraction formed about the farmer's mouth. He changed his
+posture, and said, "Ay? that's what ye're come to tell me, sir?"
+
+"Yes!" said Richard, firmly.
+
+"And that be all?"
+
+"Yes!" Richard reiterated.
+
+The farmer again changed his posture. "Then, my lad, ye've come to
+tell me a lie!"
+
+Farmer Blaize looked straight at the boy, undismayed by the dark
+flush of ire he had kindled.
+
+"You dare to call me a liar!" cried Richard, starting up.
+
+"I say," the farmer renewed his first emphasis, and smacked his
+thigh thereto, "that's a lie!"
+
+Richard held out his clenched fist. "You have twice insulted me. You
+have struck me: you have dared to call me a liar. I would have
+apologized--I would have asked your pardon, to have got off that
+fellow in prison. Yes! I would have degraded myself that another man
+should not suffer for my deed"----
+
+"Quite proper!" interposed the farmer.
+
+"And you take this opportunity of insulting me afresh. You're a
+coward, sir! nobody but a coward would have insulted me in his own
+house."
+
+"Sit ye down, sit ye down, young master," said the farmer,
+indicating the chair and cooling the outburst with his hand. "Sit
+ye down. Don't ye be hasty. If ye hadn't been hasty t'other day, we
+sh'd a been friends yet. Sit ye down, sir. I sh'd be sorry to reckon
+you out a liar, Mr. Feverel, or anybody o' your name. I respects yer
+father though we're opp'site politics. I'm willin' to think well o'
+you. What I say is, that as you say an't the trewth. Mind! I don't
+like you none the worse for't. But it an't what is. That's all! You
+knows it as well's I!"
+
+Richard, disdaining to show signs of being pacified, angrily
+reseated himself. The farmer spoke sense, and the boy, after his
+late interview with Austin, had become capable of perceiving vaguely
+that a towering passion is hardly the justification for a wrong
+course of conduct.
+
+"Come," continued the farmer, not unkindly, "what else have you to
+say?"
+
+Here was the same bitter cup he had already once drained brimming at
+Richard's lips again! Alas, poor human nature! that empties to the
+dregs a dozen of these evil drinks, to evade the single one which
+Destiny, less cruel, had insisted upon.
+
+The boy blinked and tossed it off.
+
+"I came to say that I regretted the revenge I had taken on you for
+your striking me."
+
+Farmer Blaize nodded.
+
+"And now ye've done, young gentleman?"
+
+Still another cupful!
+
+"I should be very much obliged," Richard formally began, but his
+stomach was turned; he could but sip and sip, and gather a distaste
+which threatened to make the penitential act impossible. "Very much
+obliged," he repeated: "much obliged, if you would be so kind," and
+it struck him that had he spoken this at first he would have given
+it a wording more persuasive with the farmer and more worthy of his
+own pride: more honest, in fact: for a sense of the dishonesty of
+what he was saying caused him to cringe and simulate humility to
+deceive the farmer, and the more he said the less he felt his words,
+and, feeling them less, he inflated them more. "So kind," he
+stammered, "so kind" (fancy a Feverel asking this big brute to be so
+kind!) "as to do me the favour" (_me_ the favour!) "to exert
+yourself" (it's all to please Austin) "to endeavour to--hem! to"
+(there's no saying it!)----
+
+The cup was full as ever. Richard dashed at it again.
+
+"What I came to ask is, whether you would have the kindness to try
+what you could do" (what an infamous shame to have to beg like
+this!) "do to save--do to ensure--whether you would have the
+kindness"---- It seemed out of all human power to gulp it down. The
+draught grew more and more abhorrent. To proclaim one's iniquity, to
+apologize for one's wrongdoing; thus much could be done; but to beg
+a favour of the offended party--that was beyond the self-abasement
+any Feverel could consent to. Pride, however, whose inevitable
+battle is against itself, drew aside the curtains of poor Tom's
+prison, crying a second time, "Behold your Benefactor!" and, with
+the words burning in his ears, Richard swallowed the dose:
+
+"Well, then, I want you, Mr. Blaize,--if you don't mind--will you
+help me to get this man Bakewell off his punishment?"
+
+To do Farmer Blaize justice, he waited very patiently for the boy,
+though he could not quite see why he did not take the gate at the
+first offer.
+
+"Oh!" said he, when he heard and had pondered on the request. "Hum!
+ha! we'll see about it t'morrow. But if he's innocent, you know, we
+shan't mak'n guilty."
+
+"It was I did it!" Richard declared.
+
+The farmer's half-amused expression sharpened a bit.
+
+"So, young gentleman! and you're sorry for the night's work?"
+
+"I shall see that you are paid the full extent of your losses."
+
+"Thank'ee," said the farmer drily.
+
+"And, if this poor man is released to-morrow, I don't care what the
+amount is."
+
+Farmer Blaize deflected his head twice in silence. "Bribery," one
+motion expressed: "Corruption," the other.
+
+"Now," said he, leaning forward, and fixing his elbows on his knees,
+while he counted the case at his fingers' ends, "excuse the liberty,
+but wishin' to know where this 'ere money's to come from, I sh'd
+like jest t'ask if so be Sir Austin know o' this?"
+
+"My father knows nothing of it," replied Richard.
+
+The farmer flung back in his chair. "Lie number Two," said his
+shoulders, soured by the British aversion to being plotted at, and
+not dealt with openly.
+
+"And ye've the money ready, young gentleman?"
+
+"I shall ask my father for it."
+
+"And he'll hand't out?"
+
+"Certainly he will!"
+
+Richard had not the slightest intention of ever letting his father
+into his counsels.
+
+"A good three hundred pounds, ye know?" the farmer suggested.
+
+No consideration of the extent of damages, and the size of the sum,
+affected young Richard, who said boldly, "He will not object when I
+tell him I want that sum."
+
+It was natural Farmer Blaize should be a trifle suspicious that a
+youth's guarantee would hardly be given for his father's readiness
+to disburse such a thumping bill, unless he had previously received
+his father's sanction and authority.
+
+"Hum!" said he, "why not 'a told him before?"
+
+The farmer threw an objectionable shrewdness into his query, that
+caused Richard to compress his mouth and glance high.
+
+Farmer Blaize was positive 'twas a lie.
+
+"Hum! Ye still hold to't you fired the rick?" he asked.
+
+"The blame is mine!" quoth Richard, with the loftiness of a patriot
+of old Rome.
+
+"Na, na!" the straightforward Briton put him aside. "Ye did't, or ye
+didn't do't. Did ye do't, or no?"
+
+Thrust in a corner, Richard said, "I did it."
+
+Farmer Blaize reached his hand to the bell. It was answered in an
+instant by little Lucy, who received orders to fetch in a dependent
+at Belthorpe going by the name of the Bantam, and made her exit as
+she had entered, with her eyes on the young stranger.
+
+"Now," said the farmer, "these be my principles. I'm a plain man,
+Mr. Feverel. Above board with me, and you'll find me handsome. Try
+to circumvent me, and I'm a ugly customer. I'll show you I've no
+animosity. Your father pays--you apologize. That's enough for me!
+Let Tom Bakewell fight't out with the Law, and I'll look on. The Law
+wasn't on the spot, I suppose? so the Law ain't much witness. But I
+am. Leastwise the Bantam is. I tell you, young gentleman, the
+Bantam saw't! It's no moral use whatever your denyin' that ev'dence.
+And where's the good, sir, I ask? What comes of 't? Whether it be
+you, or whether it be Tom Bakewell--ain't all one? If I holds back,
+ain't it sim'lar? It's the trewth I want! And here't comes," added
+the farmer, as Miss Lucy ushered in the Bantam, who presented a
+curious figure for that rare divinity to enliven.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+A FINE DISTINCTION
+
+
+In build of body, gait and stature, Giles Jinkson, the Bantam, was a
+tolerably fair representative of the Punic elephant, whose part,
+with diverse anticipations, the generals of the Blaize and Feverel
+forces, from opposing ranks, expected him to play. Giles, surnamed
+the Bantam, on account of some forgotten sally of his youth or
+infancy, moved and looked elephantine. It sufficed that Giles was
+well fed to assure that Giles was faithful--if uncorrupted. The farm
+which supplied to him ungrudging provender had all his vast capacity
+for work in willing exercise: the farmer who held the farm his
+instinct reverenced as the fountain-source of beef and bacon, to say
+nothing of beer, which was plentiful at Belthorpe, and good. This
+Farmer Blaize well knew, and he reckoned consequently that here was
+an animal always to be relied on--a sort of human composition out of
+dog, horse, and bull, a cut above each of these quadrupeds in
+usefulness, and costing proportionately more, but on the whole worth
+the money, and therefore invaluable, as everything worth its money
+must be to a wise man. When the stealing of grain had been made
+known at Belthorpe, the Bantam, a fellow-thresher with Tom Bakewell,
+had shared with him the shadow of the guilt. Farmer Blaize, if he
+hesitated which to suspect, did not debate a second as to which he
+would discard; and, when the Bantam said he had seen Tom secreting
+pilkins in a sack, Farmer Blaize chose to believe him, and off went
+poor Tom, told to rejoice in the clemency that spared his appearance
+at Sessions.
+
+The Bantam's small sleepy orbits saw many things, and just at the
+right moment, it seemed. He was certainly the first to give the clue
+at Belthorpe on the night of the conflagration, and he may,
+therefore, have seen poor Tom retreating stealthily from the scene,
+as he averred he did. Lobourne had its say on the subject. Rustic
+Lobourne hinted broadly at a young woman in the case, and moreover,
+told a tale of how these fellow-threshers had, in noble rivalry, one
+day turned upon each other to see which of the two threshed the
+best; whereof the Bantam still bore marks, and malice, it was said.
+However, there he stood, and tugged his forelocks to the company,
+and if Truth really had concealed herself in him she must have been
+hard set to find her unlikeliest hiding-place.
+
+"Now," said the farmer, marshalling forth his elephant with the
+confidence of one who delivers his ace of trumps, "tell this young
+gentleman what ye saw on the night of the fire, Bantam!"
+
+The Bantam jerked a bit of a bow to his patron, and then swung
+round, fully obscuring him from Richard.
+
+Richard fixed his eyes on the floor, while the Bantam in rudest
+Doric commenced his narrative. Knowing what was to come, and
+thoroughly nerved to confute the main incident, Richard barely
+listened to his barbarous locution: but when the recital arrived at
+the point where the Bantam affirmed he had seen "T'm Baak'll wi's
+owen hoies," Richard faced him, and was amazed to find himself being
+mutely addressed by a series of intensely significant grimaces,
+signs, and winks.
+
+"What do you mean? Why are you making those faces at me?" cried the
+boy indignantly.
+
+Farmer Blaize leaned round the Bantam to have a look at him, and
+beheld the stolidest mask ever given to man.
+
+"Bain't makin' no faces at nobody," growled the sulky elephant.
+
+The farmer commanded him to face about and finish.
+
+"A see T'm Baak'll," the Bantam recommenced, and again the
+contortions of a horrible wink were directed at Richard. The boy
+might well believe this churl was lying, and he did, and was
+emboldened to exclaim--
+
+"You never saw Tom Bakewell set fire to that rick!"
+
+The Bantam swore to it, grimacing an accompaniment.
+
+"I tell you," said Richard, "I put the lucifers there myself!"
+
+The suborned elephant was staggered. He meant to telegraph to the
+young gentleman that he was loyal and true to certain gold pieces
+that had been given him, and that in the right place and at the
+right time he should prove so. Why was he thus suspected? Why was he
+not understood?
+
+"A thowt I see 'un, then," muttered the Bantam, trying a middle
+course.
+
+This brought down on him the farmer, who roared, "Thought! Ye
+thought! What d'ye mean? Speak out, and don't be thinkin'. Thought?
+What the devil's that?"
+
+"How could he see who it was on a pitch-dark night?" Richard put in.
+
+"Thought!" the farmer bellowed louder. "Thought--Devil take ye, when
+ye took yer oath on't. Hulloa! What are ye screwin' yer eye at Mr.
+Feverel for?--I say, young gentleman, have you spoken to this chap
+before now?"
+
+"I?" replied Richard. "I have not seen him before."
+
+Farmer Blaize grasped the two arms of the chair he sat on, and
+glared his doubts.
+
+"Come," said he to the Bantam, "speak out, and ha' done wi't. Say
+what ye saw, and none o' yer thoughts. Damn yer thoughts! Ye saw Tom
+Bakewell fire that there rick!" The farmer pointed at some musk-pots
+in the window. "What business ha' you to be a-thinkin'? You're a
+witness? Thinkin' an't ev'dence. What'll ye say to-morrow before
+magistrate! Mind! what you say to-day, you'll stick by to-morrow."
+
+Thus adjured, the Bantam hitched his breech. What on earth the young
+gentleman meant he was at a loss to speculate. He could not believe
+that the young gentleman wanted to be transported, but if he had
+been paid to help that, why, he would. And considering that this
+day's evidence rather bound him down to the morrow's, he determined,
+after much ploughing and harrowing through obstinate shocks of hair,
+to be not altogether positive as to the person. It is possible that
+he became thereby more a mansion of truth than he previously had
+been; for the night, as he said, was so dark that you could not see
+your hand before your face; and though, as he expressed it, you
+might be mortal sure of a man, you could not identify him upon oath,
+and the party he had taken for Tom Bakewell, and could have sworn
+to, might have been the young gentleman present, especially as he
+was ready to swear it upon oath.
+
+So ended the Bantam.
+
+No sooner had he ceased, than Farmer Blaize jumped up from his
+chair, and made a fine effort to lift him out of the room from the
+point of his toe. He failed, and sank back groaning with the pain of
+the exertion and disappointment.
+
+"They're liars, every one!" he cried. "Liars, perj'rers, bribers,
+and c'rrupters!--Stop!" to the Bantam, who was slinking away.
+"You've done for yerself already! You swore to it!"
+
+"A din't!" said the Bantam, doggedly.
+
+"You swore to't," the farmer vociferated afresh.
+
+The Bantam played a tune upon the handle of the door, and still
+affirmed that he did not; a double contradiction at which the farmer
+absolutely raged in his chair, and was hoarse, as he called out a
+third time that the Bantam had sworn to it.
+
+"Noa!" said the Bantam, ducking his poll. "Noa!" he repeated in a
+lower note; and then, while a sombre grin betokening idiotic
+enjoyment of his profound casuistical quibble worked at his jaw:
+
+"Not up'n o-ath!" he added, with a twitch of the shoulder and an
+angular jerk of the elbow.
+
+Farmer Blaize looked vacantly at Richard, as if to ask him what he
+thought of England's peasantry after the sample they had there.
+Richard would have preferred not to laugh, but his dignity gave way
+to his sense of the ludicrous, and he let fly a shout. The farmer
+was in no laughing mood. He turned a wide eye back to the door.
+"Lucky for'm," he exclaimed, seeing the Bantam had vanished, for his
+fingers itched to break that stubborn head. He grew very puffy, and
+addressed Richard solemnly:
+
+"Now, look ye here, Mr. Feverel! You've been a-tampering with my
+witness. It's no use denyin'! I say y' 'ave, sir! You, or some of
+ye. I don't care about no Feverel! My witness there has been bribed.
+The Bantam's been bribed," and he shivered his pipe with an
+energetic thump on the table--"bribed! I knows it! I could swear
+to't!"----
+
+"Upon oath?" Richard inquired, with a grave face.
+
+"Ay, upon oath!" said the farmer, not observing the impertinence.
+
+"I'd take my Bible oath on't! He's been corrupted, my principal
+witness! Oh, it's dam cunnin', but it won't do the trick. I'll
+transpoort Tom Bakewell, sure as a gun. He shall travel, that man
+shall. Sorry for you, Mr. Feverel--sorry you haven't seen how to
+treat me proper--you, or yours. Money won't do everything--no! it
+won't. It'll c'rrupt a witness, but it won't clear a felon. I'd ha'
+'scused you, sir! You're a boy and'll learn better. I asked no more
+than payment and a 'pology; and that I'd ha' taken content--always
+provided my witnesses weren't tampered with. Now you must stand yer
+luck, all o' ye."
+
+Richard stood up and replied, "Very well, Mr. Blaize."
+
+"And if," continued the farmer, "Tom Bakewell don't drag you into't
+after 'm, why, you're safe, as I hope ye'll be, sincere!"
+
+"It was not in consideration of my own safety that I sought this
+interview with you," said Richard, head erect.
+
+"Grant ye that," the farmer responded. "Grant ye that! Yer bold
+enough, young gentleman--comes of the blood that should be! If y'
+had only ha' spoke trewth!--I believe yer father--believe every word
+he said. I do wish I could ha' said as much for Sir Austin's son and
+heir."
+
+"What!" cried Richard, with an astonishment hardly to be feigned,
+"you have seen my father?"
+
+But Farmer Blaize had now such a scent for lies that he could detect
+them where they did not exist, and mumbled gruffly,
+
+"Ay, we knows all about that!"
+
+The boy's perplexity saved him from being irritated. Who could have
+told his father? An old fear of his father came upon him, and a
+touch of an old inclination to revolt.
+
+"My father knows of this?" said he, very loudly, and staring, as he
+spoke, right through the farmer. "Who has played me false? Who would
+betray me to him? It was Austin! No one knew it but Austin. Yes, and
+it was Austin who persuaded me to come here and submit to these
+indignities. Why couldn't he be open with me? I shall never trust
+him again!"----
+
+"And why not you with me, young gentleman?" said the farmer. "I sh'd
+trust you if ye had."
+
+Richard did not see the analogy. He bowed stiffly and bade him good
+afternoon.
+
+Farmer Blaize pulled the bell. "'Company the young gentleman out,
+Lucy," he waved to the little damsel in the doorway. "Do the
+honours. And, Mr. Richard, ye might ha' made a friend o' me, sir,
+and it's not too late so to do. I'm not cruel, but I hate lies. I
+whipped my boy Tom, bigger than you, for not bein' above board, only
+yesterday,--ay! made 'un stand within swing o' this chair, and
+take's measure. Now, if ye'll come down to me, and speak trewth
+before the trial--if it's only five minutes before't; or if Sir
+Austin, who's a gentleman, 'll say there's been no tamperin' with
+any o' my witnesses, his word for't--well and good! I'll do my best
+to help off Tom Bakewell. And I'm glad, young gentleman, you've got
+a conscience about a poor man, though he's a villain. Good
+afternoon, sir."
+
+Richard marched hastily out of the room, and through the garden,
+never so much as deigning a glance at his wistful little guide, who
+hung at the garden gate to watch him up the lane, wondering a world
+of fancies about the handsome proud boy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+RICHARD PASSES THROUGH HIS PRELIMINARY ORDEAL, AND IS THE OCCASION
+OF AN APHORISM
+
+
+To have determined upon an act something akin to heroism in its way, and
+to have fulfilled it by lying heartily, and so subverting the whole
+structure built by good resolution, seems a sad downfall if we forget
+what human nature, in its green weedy spring, is composed of. Young
+Richard had quitted his cousin Austin fully resolved to do his penance
+and drink the bitter cup; and he had drunk it; drained many cups to the
+dregs; and it was to no purpose. Still they floated before him, brimmed,
+trebly bitter. Away from Austin's influence, he was almost the same boy
+who had slipped the guinea into Tom Bakewell's hand, and the lucifers
+into Farmer Blaize's rick. For good seed is long ripening; a good boy is
+not made in a minute. Enough that the seed was in him. He chafed on his
+road to Raynham at the scene he had just endured, and the figure of
+Belthorpe's fat tenant burnt like hot copper on the tablet of his brain,
+insufferably condescending, and, what was worse, in the right. Richard,
+obscured as his mind's eye was by wounded pride, saw that clearly, and
+hated his enemy for it the more.
+
+Heavy Benson's tongue was knelling dinner as Richard arrived at the
+Abbey. He hurried up to his room to dress. Accident, or design, had
+laid the book of Sir Austin's aphorisms open on the dressing-table.
+Hastily combing his hair, Richard glanced down and read--
+
+"The Dog returneth to his vomit: the Liar must eat his Lie."
+
+Underneath was interjected in pencil: "The Devil's mouthful!"
+
+Young Richard ran downstairs feeling that his father had struck him
+in the face.
+
+Sir Austin marked the scarlet stain on his son's cheek-bones. He sought
+the youth's eye, but Richard would not look, and sat conning his plate,
+an abject copy of Adrian's succulent air at that employment. How could
+he pretend to the relish of an epicure when he was painfully
+endeavouring to masticate The Devil's mouthful?
+
+Heavy Benson sat upon the wretched dinner. Hippias, usually the silent
+member, as if awakened by the unnatural stillness, became sprightly,
+like the goatsucker owl at night, and spoke much of his book, his
+digestion, and his dreams, and was spared both by Algernon and Adrian.
+One inconsequent dream he related, about fancying himself quite young
+and rich, and finding himself suddenly in a field cropping razors
+around him, when, just as he had, by steps dainty as those of a French
+dancing-master, reached the middle, he to his dismay beheld a path clear
+of the bloodthirsty steel-crop, which he might have taken at first had
+he looked narrowly; and there he was.
+
+Hippias's brethren regarded him with eyes that plainly said they wished
+he had remained there. Sir Austin, however, drew forth his note-book,
+and jotted down a reflection. A composer of aphorisms can pluck blossoms
+even from a razor-crop. Was not Hippias's dream the very counterpart of
+Richard's position? He, had he looked narrowly, might have taken the
+clear path: he, too, had been making dainty steps till he was surrounded
+by the grinning blades. And from that text Sir Austin preached to his
+son when they were alone. Little Clare was still too unwell to be
+permitted to attend the dessert, and father and son were soon closeted
+together.
+
+It was a strange meeting. They seemed to have been separated so long.
+The father took his son's hand; they sat without a word passing between
+them. Silence said most. The boy did not understand his father: his
+father frequently thwarted him: at times he thought his father foolish:
+but that paternal pressure of his hand was eloquent to him of how warmly
+he was beloved. He tried once or twice to steal his hand away, conscious
+it was melting him. The spirit of his pride, and old rebellion,
+whispered him to be hard, unbending, resolute. Hard he had entered his
+father's study: hard he had met his father's eyes. He could not meet
+them now. His father sat beside him gently; with a manner that was
+almost meekness, so he loved this boy. The poor gentleman's lips moved.
+He was praying internally to God for him.
+
+By degrees an emotion awoke in the boy's bosom. Love is that blessed
+wand which wins the waters from the hardness of the heart. Richard
+fought against it, for the dignity of old rebellion. The tears would
+come; hot and struggling over the dams of pride. Shamefully fast they
+began to fall. He could no longer conceal them, or check the sobs. Sir
+Austin drew him nearer and nearer, till the beloved head was on his
+breast.
+
+An hour afterwards, Adrian Harley, Austin Wentworth, and Algernon
+Feverel were summoned to the baronet's study.
+
+Adrian came last. There was a style of affable omnipotence about the
+wise youth as he slung himself into a chair, and made an arch of the
+points of his fingers, through which to gaze on his blundering
+kinsmen. Careless as one may be whose sagacity has foreseen, and
+whose benevolent efforts have forestalled, the point of danger at
+the threshold, Adrian crossed his legs, and only intruded on their
+introductory remarks so far as to hum half audibly at intervals--
+
+    "Ripton and Richard were two pretty men,"
+
+in parody of the old ballad. Young Richard's red eyes, and the baronet's
+ruffled demeanour, told him that an explanation had taken place, and a
+reconciliation. That was well. The baronet would now pay cheerfully.
+Adrian summed and considered these matters, and barely listened when the
+baronet called attention to what he had to say: which was elaborately to
+inform all present, what all present very well knew, that a rick had
+been fired, that his son was implicated as an accessory to the fact,
+that the perpetrator was now imprisoned, and that Richard's family were,
+as it seemed to him, bound in honour to do their utmost to effect the
+man's release.
+
+Then the baronet stated that he had himself been down to Belthorpe, his
+son likewise: and that he had found every disposition in Blaize to meet
+his wishes.
+
+The lamp which ultimately was sure to be lifted up to illumine the
+acts of this secretive race began slowly to dispread its rays; and,
+as statement followed statement, they saw that all had known of the
+business: that all had been down to Belthorpe: all save the wise
+youth Adrian, who, with due deference and a sarcastic shrug,
+objected to the proceeding, as putting them in the hands of the man
+Blaize. His wisdom shone forth in an oration so persuasive and
+aphoristic that had it not been based on a plea against honour, it
+would have made Sir Austin waver. But its basis was expediency, and
+the baronet had a better aphorism of his own to confute him with.
+
+"Expediency is man's wisdom, Adrian Harley. Doing right is God's."
+
+Adrian curbed his desire to ask Sir Austin whether an attempt to
+counteract the just working of the law was doing right. The direct
+application of an aphorism was unpopular at Raynham.
+
+"I am to understand then," said he, "that Blaize consents not to
+press the prosecution."
+
+"Of course he won't," Algernon remarked. "Confound him! he'll have
+his money, and what does he want besides?"
+
+"These agricultural gentleman are delicate customers to deal with.
+However, if he really consents"----
+
+"I have his promise," said the baronet, fondling his son.
+
+Young Richard looked up to his father, as if he wished to speak. He
+said nothing, and Sir Austin took it as a mute reply to his
+caresses, and caressed him the more. Adrian perceived a reserve in
+the boy's manner, and as he was not quite satisfied that his chief
+should suppose him to have been the only idle, and not the most
+acute and vigilant member of the family, he commenced a
+cross-examination of him by asking who had last spoken with the
+tenant of Belthorpe?
+
+"I think I saw him last," murmured Richard, and relinquished his
+father's hand.
+
+Adrian fastened on his prey. "And left him with a distinct and
+satisfactory assurance of his amicable intentions?"
+
+"No," said Richard.
+
+"Not?" the Feverels joined in astounded chorus.
+
+Richard sidled away from his father, and repeated a shamefaced "No."
+
+"Was he hostile?" inquired Adrian, smoothing his palms, and smiling.
+
+"Yes," the boy confessed.
+
+Here was quite another view of their position. Adrian, generally
+patient of results, triumphed strongly at having evoked it, and
+turned upon Austin Wentworth, reproving him for inducing the boy to
+go down to Belthorpe. Austin looked grieved. He feared that Richard
+had failed in his good resolve.
+
+"I thought it his duty to go," he observed.
+
+"It was!" said the baronet, emphatically.
+
+"And you see what comes of it, sir," Adrian struck in. "These
+agricultural gentlemen, I repeat, are delicate customers to deal
+with. For my part I would prefer being in the hands of a policeman.
+We are decidedly collared by Blaize. What were his words, Ricky?
+Give it in his own Doric."
+
+"He said he would transport Tom Bakewell."
+
+Adrian smoothed his palms, and smiled again. Then they could afford
+to defy Mr. Blaize, he informed them significantly, and made once
+more a mysterious allusion to the Punic elephant, bidding his
+relatives be at peace. They were attaching, in his opinion, too much
+importance to Richard's complicity. The man was a fool, and a very
+extraordinary arsonite, to have an accomplice at all. It was a thing
+unknown in the annals of rick-burning. But one would be severer than
+law itself to say that a boy of fourteen had instigated to crime a
+full-grown man. At that rate the boy was "father of the man" with a
+vengeance, and one might hear next that "the baby was father of the
+boy." They would find common sense a more benevolent ruler than
+poetical metaphysics.
+
+When he had done, Austin, with his customary directness, asked him
+what he meant.
+
+"I confess, Adrian," said the baronet, hearing him expostulate with
+Austin's stupidity, "I for one am at a loss. I have heard that this
+man, Bakewell, chooses voluntarily not to inculpate my son. Seldom
+have I heard anything that so gratified me. It is a view of innate
+nobleness in the rustic's character which many a gentleman might
+take example from. We are bound to do our utmost for the man." And,
+saying that he should pay a second visit to Belthorpe, to inquire
+into the reasons for the farmer's sudden exposition of vindictiveness,
+Sir Austin rose.
+
+Before he left the room, Algernon asked Richard if the farmer had
+vouchsafed any reasons, and the boy then spoke of the tampering with
+the witnesses, and the Bantam's "Not upon oath!" which caused Adrian
+to choke with laughter. Even the baronet smiled at so cunning a
+distinction as that involved in swearing a thing, and not swearing
+it upon oath.
+
+"How little," he exclaimed, "does one yeoman know another! To
+elevate a distinction into a difference is the natural action of
+their minds. I will point that out to Blaize. He shall see that the
+idea is native born."
+
+Richard saw his father go forth. Adrian, too, was ill at ease.
+
+"This trotting down to Belthorpe spoils all," said he. "The affair
+would pass over to-morrow--Blaize has no witnesses. The old rascal
+is only standing out for more money."
+
+"No, he isn't," Richard corrected him. "It's not that. I'm sure he
+believes his witnesses have been tampered with, as he calls it."
+
+"What if they have, boy?" Adrian put it boldly. "The ground is cut
+from under his feet."
+
+"Blaize told me that if my father would give his word there had been
+nothing of the sort, he would take it. My father will give his
+word."
+
+"Then," said Adrian, "you had better stop him from going down."
+
+Austin looked at Adrian keenly, and questioned him whether he
+thought the farmer was justified in his suspicions. The wise youth
+was not to be entrapped. He had only been given to understand that
+the witnesses were tolerably unstable, and, like the Bantam, ready
+to swear lustily, but not upon the Book. How given to understand, he
+chose not to explain, but he reiterated that the chief should not be
+allowed to go down to Belthorpe.
+
+Sir Austin was in the lane leading to the farm when he heard steps
+of some one running behind him. It was dark, and he shook off the
+hand that laid hold of his cloak, roughly, not recognizing his son.
+
+"It's I, sir," said Richard panting. "Pardon me. You mustn't go in
+there."
+
+"Why not?" said the baronet, putting his arm about him.
+
+"Not now," continued the boy. "I will tell you all to-night. I must
+see the farmer myself. It was my fault, sir. I--I lied to him--the
+Liar must eat his Lie. Oh, forgive me for disgracing you, sir. I did
+it--I hope I did it to save Tom Bakewell. Let me go in alone, and
+speak the truth."
+
+"Go, and I will wait for you here," said his father.
+
+The wind that bowed the old elms, and shivered the dead leaves in
+the air, had a voice and a meaning for the baronet during that
+half-hour's lonely pacing up and down under the darkness, awaiting
+his boy's return. The solemn gladness of his heart gave nature a
+tongue. Through the desolation flying overhead--the wailing of the
+Mother of Plenty across the bare-swept land--he caught intelligible
+signs of the beneficent order of the universe, from a heart newly
+confirmed in its grasp of the principle of human goodness, as
+manifested in the dear child who had just left him; confirmed in its
+belief in the ultimate victory of good within us, without which
+nature has neither music nor meaning, and is rock, stone, tree, and
+nothing more.
+
+In the dark, the dead leaves beating on his face, he had a word for
+his note-book: "There is for the mind but one grasp of happiness:
+from that uppermost pinnacle of wisdom, whence we see that this
+world is well designed."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+IN WHICH THE LAST ACT OF THE BAKEWELL COMEDY IS CLOSED IN A LETTER
+
+
+Of all the chief actors in the Bakewell Comedy, Master Ripton
+Thompson awaited the fearful morning which was to decide Tom's fate,
+in dolefullest mood, and suffered the gravest mental terrors.
+Adrian, on parting with him, had taken casual occasion to speak of
+the position of the criminal in modern Europe, assuring him that
+International Treaty now did what Universal Empire had aforetime
+done, and that among Atlantic barbarians now, as among the Scythians
+of old, an offender would find precarious refuge and an emissary
+haunting him.
+
+In the paternal home, under the roofs of Law, and removed from the
+influence of his conscienceless young chief, the staggering nature
+of the act he had put his hand to, its awful felonious aspect,
+overwhelmed Ripton. He saw it now for the first time. "Why, it's
+next to murder!" he cried out to his amazed soul, and wandered about
+the house with a prickly skin. Thoughts of America, and commencing
+life afresh as an innocent gentleman, had crossed his disordered
+brain. He wrote to his friend Richard, proposing to collect
+disposable funds, and embark, in case of Tom's breaking his word, or
+of accidental discovery. He dared not confide the secret to his
+family, as his leader had sternly enjoined him to avoid any weakness
+of that kind; and, being by nature honest and communicative, the
+restriction was painful, and melancholy fell upon the boy. Mama
+Thompson attributed it to love. The daughters of parchment rallied
+him concerning Miss Clare Forey. His hourly letters to Raynham, and
+silence as to everything and everybody there, his nervousness, and
+unwonted propensity to sudden inflammation of the cheeks, were set
+down for sure signs of the passion. Miss Letitia Thompson, the
+pretty and least parchmenty one, destined by her Papa for the heir
+of Raynham, and perfectly aware of her brilliant future, up to which
+she had, since Ripton's departure, dressed and grimaced, and studied
+cadences (the latter with such success, though not yet fifteen, that
+she languished to her maid, and melted the small factotum
+footman)--Miss Letty, whose insatiable thirst for intimations about
+the young heir Ripton could not satisfy, tormented him daily in
+revenge, and once, quite unconsciously, gave the lad a fearful turn;
+for after dinner, when Mr. Thompson read the paper by the fire,
+preparatory to sleeping at his accustomed post, and Mama Thompson
+and her submissive female brood sat tasking the swift intricacies of
+the needle, and emulating them with the tongue, Miss Letty stole
+behind Ripton's chair, and introduced between him and his book the
+Latin initial letter, large and illuminated, of the theme she
+supposed to be absorbing him, as it did herself. The unexpected
+vision of this accusing Captain of the Alphabet, this resplendent
+and haunting A, fronting him bodily, threw Ripton straight back in
+his chair, while Guilt, with her ancient indecision what colours to
+assume on detection, flew from red to white, from white to red,
+across his fallen chaps. Letty laughed triumphantly. Amor, the word
+she had in mind, certainly has a connection with Arson.
+
+But the delivery of a letter into Master Ripton's hands, furnished
+her with other and likelier appearances to study. For scarce had
+Ripton plunged his head into the missive than he gave way to violent
+transports, such as the healthy-minded little damsel, for all her
+languishing cadences, deemed she really could express were a
+downright declaration to be made to her. The boy did not stop at
+table. Quickly recollecting the presence of his family, he rushed to
+his own room. And now the girl's ingenuity was taxed to gain
+possession of that letter. She succeeded, of course, she being a
+huntress with few scruples and the game unguarded. With the eyes of
+amazement she read this foreign matter:
+
+  "Dear Ripton,--If Tom had been committed I would have shot
+  old Blaize. Do you know my father was behind us that night
+  when Clare saw the ghost and heard all we said before the fire
+  burst out. It is no use trying to conceal anything from him.
+  Well as you are in an awful state I will tell you all about it.
+  After you left Ripton I had a conversation with Austin and he
+  persuaded me to go down to old Blaize and ask him to help off
+  Tom. I went, for I would have done anything for Tom after what
+  he said to Austin and I defied the old churl to do his worst.
+  Then he said if my father paid the money and nobody had tampered
+  with his witnesses he would not mind if Tom did get off and he
+  had his chief witness in called the Bantam very like his master
+  I think and the Bantam began winking at me tremendjously as you
+  say, and said he had sworn he saw Tom Bakewell but not upon
+  oath. He meant not on the Bible. He could swear to it but not
+  on the Bible. I burst out laughing and you should have seen
+  the rage old Blaize was in. It was splendid fun. Then we had a
+  consultation at home Austin Rady my father Uncle Algernon who
+  has come down to us again and your friend in prosperity and
+  adversity R. D. F. My father said he would go down to old Blaize
+  and give him the word of a gentleman we had not tampered with
+  his witnesses and when he was gone we were all talking and Rady
+  says he must not see the farmer. I am as certain as I live that
+  it was Rady bribed the Bantam. Well I ran and caught up with my
+  father and told him not to go in to old Blaize but I would and
+  eat my words and tell him the truth. He waited for me in the
+  lane. Never mind what passed between me and old Blaize. He
+  made me beg and pray of him not to press it against Tom and
+  then to complete it he brought in a little girl a niece of his and
+  says to me she's your best friend after all and told me to thank
+  her. A little girl twelve years of age. What business had she
+  to mix herself up in my matters. Depend upon it Ripton wherever
+  there is mischief there are girls I think. She had the insolence
+  to notice my face, and ask me not to be unhappy. I was polite
+  of course but I would not look at her. Well the morning came
+  and Tom was had up before Sir Miles Papworth. It was Sir Miles
+  gout gave us the time or Tom would have been had up before we
+  could do anything. Adrian did not want me to go but my father
+  said I should accompany him and held my hand all the time. I
+  shall be careful about getting into these scrapes again. When
+  you have done anything honourable you do not mind but getting
+  among policemen and magistrates makes you ashamed of yourself.
+  Sir Miles was very attentive to my father and me and dead against
+  Tom. We sat beside him and Tom was brought in. Sir Miles told
+  my father that if there was one thing that showed a low villain
+  it was rick-burning. What do you think of that. I looked him
+  straight in the face and he said to me he was doing me a service
+  in getting Tom committed and clearing the country of such fellows
+  and Rady began laughing. I hate Rady. My father said his son
+  was not in haste to inherit and have estates of his own to watch
+  and Sir Miles laughed too. I thought we were discovered at first.
+  Then they began the examination of Tom. The Tinker was the first
+  witness and he proved that Tom had spoken against old Blaize and
+  said something about burning his rick. I wished I had stood in the
+  lane to Bursley with him alone. Our country lawyer we engaged
+  for Tom cross-questioned him and then he said he was not ready
+  to swear to the exact words that had passed between him and
+  Tom. I should think not. Then came another who swore he had
+  seen Tom lurking about the farmer's grounds that night. Then
+  came the Bantam and I saw him look at Rady. I was tremendjously
+  excited and my father kept pressing my hand. Just fancy my being
+  brought to feel that a word from that fellow would make me
+  miserable for life and he must perjure himself to help me. That
+  comes of giving way to passion. My father says when we do that
+  we are calling in the devil as doctor. Well the Bantam was told
+  to state what he had seen and the moment he began Rady who was
+  close by me began to shake and he was laughing I knew though
+  his face was as grave as Sir Miles. You never heard such a
+  rigmarole but I could not laugh. He said he thought he was
+  certain he had seen somebody by the rick and it was Tom Bakewell
+  who was the only man he knew who had a grudge against Farmer
+  Blaize and if the object had been a little bigger he would not
+  mind swearing to Tom and would swear to him for he was dead
+  certain it was Tom only what he saw looked smaller and it was
+  pitch-dark at the time. He was asked what time it was he saw
+  the person steal away from the rick and then he began to scratch
+  his head and said supper-time. Then they asked what time he had
+  supper and he said nine o'clock by the clock and we proved that
+  at nine o'clock Tom was drinking in the ale-house with the
+  Tinker at Bursley and Sir Miles swore and said he was afraid
+  he could not commit Tom and when he heard that Tom looked up
+  at me and I say he is a noble fellow and no one shall sneer at Tom
+  while I live. Mind that. Well Sir Miles asked us to dine with
+  him and Tom was safe and I am to have him and educate him if I
+  like for my servant and I will. And I will give money to his
+  mother and make her rich and he shall never repent he knew me.
+  I say Rip. The Bantam must have seen _me_. It was when I went
+  to stick in the lucifers. As we were all going home from Sir
+  Miles's at night he has lots of redfaced daughters but I did not
+  dance with them though they had music and were full of fun and
+  I did not care to I was so delighted and almost let it out. When
+  we left and rode home Rady said to my father the Bantam was not
+  such a fool as he was thought and my father said one must be in
+  a state of great personal exaltation to apply that epithet to
+  any man and Rady shut his mouth and I gave my pony a clap of the
+  heel for joy. I think my father suspects what Rady did and does
+  not approve of it. And he need not have done it after all and
+  might have spoilt it. I have been obliged to order him not to
+  call me Ricky for he stops short at Rick so that everybody
+  knows what he means. My dear Austin is going to South America.
+  My pony is in capital condition. My father is the cleverest and
+  best man in the world. Clare is a little better. I am quite happy.
+  I hope we shall meet soon my dear Old Rip and we will not get
+  into any more tremendjous scrapes will we.--I remain, Your sworn
+  friend,
+
+                                            "RICHARD DORIA FEVEREL."
+
+  "_P.S._ I am to have a nice River Yacht. Good-bye, Rip. Mind you
+  learn to box. Mind you are not to show this to any of your friends
+  on pain of my displeasure.
+
+  "N.B. Lady B. was so angry when I told her that I had not come to
+  her before. She would do anything in the world for me. I like her
+  next best to my father and Austin. Good-bye old Rip."
+
+Poor little Letitia, after three perusals of this ingenuous epistle,
+where the laws of punctuation were so disregarded, resigned it to
+one of the pockets of her brother Ripton's best jacket, deeply
+smitten with the careless composer. And so ended the last act of the
+Bakewell Comedy, on which the curtain closes with Sir Austin's
+pointing out to his friends the beneficial action of the System in
+it from beginning to end.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE BLOSSOMING SEASON
+
+
+Laying of ghosts is a public duty, and as the mystery of the
+apparition that had frightened little Clare was never solved on the
+stage of events at Raynham, where dread walked the Abbey, let us go
+behind the scenes a moment. Morally superstitious as the baronet
+was, the character of his mind was opposed to anything like
+spiritual agency in the affairs of men, and, when the matter was
+made clear to him, it shook off a weight of weakness and restored
+his mental balance; so that from this time he went about more like
+the man he had once been, grasping more thoroughly the great truth,
+that This World is well designed. Nay, he could laugh on hearing
+Adrian, in reminiscence of the ill luck of one of the family
+members at its first manifestation, call the uneasy spirit,
+Algernon's Leg.
+
+Mrs. Doria was outraged. She maintained that her child had seen----.
+Not to believe in it was almost to rob her of her personal property.
+After satisfactorily studying his old state of mind in her, Sir
+Austin, moved by pity, took her aside one day and showed her that
+her Ghost could write words in the flesh. It was a letter from the
+unhappy lady who had given Richard birth,--brief cold lines, simply
+telling him his house would be disturbed by her no more. Cold lines,
+but penned by what heart-broken abnegation, and underlying them with
+what anguish of soul! Like most who dealt with him, Lady Feverel
+thought her husband a man fatally stern and implacable, and she
+acted as silly creatures will act when they fancy they see a fate
+against them: she neither petitioned for her right nor claimed it:
+she tried to ease her heart's yearning by stealth, and now she
+renounced all. Mrs. Doria, not wanting in the family tenderness and
+softness, shuddered at him for accepting the sacrifice so
+composedly: but he bade her to think how distracting to this boy
+would be the sight of such relations between mother and father. A
+few years, and as man he should know, and judge, and love her. "Let
+this be her penance, not inflicted by me!" Mrs. Doria bowed to the
+System for another, not opining when it would be her turn to bow for
+herself.
+
+Further behind the scenes we observe Rizzio and Mary grown older,
+much disenchanted: she discrowned, dishevelled,--he with gouty
+fingers on a greasy guitar. The Diaper Sandoe of promise lends his
+pen for small hires. His fame has sunk; his bodily girth has
+sensibly increased. What he can do, and will do, is still his theme;
+meantime the juice of the juniper is in requisition, and it seems
+that those small hires cannot be performed without it. Returning
+from her wretched journey to her wretcheder home, the lady had to
+listen to a mild reproof from easy-going Diaper,--a reproof so mild
+that he couched it in blank verse: for, seldom writing metrically
+now, he took to talking it. With a fluent sympathetic tear, he
+explained to her that she was damaging her interests by these
+proceedings; nor did he shrink from undertaking to elucidate
+wherefore. Pluming a smile upon his succulent mouth, he told her
+that the poverty she lived in was utterly unbefitting her gentle
+nurture, and that he had reason to believe--could assure her--that
+an annuity was on the point of being granted her by her husband. And
+Diaper broke his bud of a smile into full flower as he delivered
+this information. She learnt that he had applied to her husband for
+money. It is hard to have one's prop of self-respect cut away just
+when we are suffering a martyr's agony at the stake. There was a
+five minutes tragic colloquy in the recesses behind the
+scenes,--totally tragic to Diaper, who had fondly hoped to bask in
+the warm sun of that annuity, and re-emerge from his state of grub.
+The lady then wrote the letter Sir Austin held open to his sister.
+The atmosphere behind the scenes is not wholesome, so, having laid
+the Ghost, we will return and face the curtain.
+
+That infinitesimal dose of THE WORLD which Master Ripton Thompson
+had furnished to the System with such instantaneous and surprising
+effect was considered by Sir Austin to have worked well, and to be
+for the time quite sufficient, so that Ripton did not receive a
+second invitation to Raynham, and Richard had no special intimate of
+his own age to rub his excessive vitality against, and wanted none.
+His hands were full enough with Tom Bakewell. Moreover, his father
+and he were heart in heart. The boy's mind was opening, and turned
+to his father affectionately reverent. At this period, when the
+young savage grows into higher influences, the faculty of worship is
+foremost in him. At this period Jesuits will stamp the future of
+their chargeling flocks; and all who bring up youth by a System, and
+watch it, know that it is the malleable moment. Boys possessing any
+mental or moral force to give them a tendency, then predestinate
+their careers; or, if under supervision, take the impress that is
+given them: not often to cast it off, and seldom to cast it off
+altogether.
+
+In Sir Austin's Note-book was written: "Between Simple Boyhood and
+Adolescence--The Blossoming Season--on the threshold of Puberty,
+there is one Unselfish Hour--say, Spiritual Seed-time."
+
+He took care that good seed should be planted in Richard, and that
+the most fruitful seed for a youth, namely, Example, should be of a
+kind to germinate in him the love of every form of nobleness.
+
+"I am only striving to make my son a Christian," he said, answering
+them who persisted in expostulating with the System. And to these
+instructions he gave an aim: "First be virtuous," he told his son,
+"and then serve your country with heart and soul." The youth was
+instructed to cherish an ambition for statesmanship, and he and his
+father read history and the speeches of British orators to some
+purpose; for one day Sir Austin found him leaning cross-legged, and
+with his hand to his chin, against a pedestal supporting the bust of
+Chatham, contemplating the hero of our Parliament, his eyes
+streaming with tears.
+
+People said the baronet carried the principle of Example so far that
+he only retained his boozing dyspeptic brother Hippias at Raynham in
+order to exhibit to his son the woeful retribution nature wreaked
+upon a life of indulgence; poor Hippias having now become a walking
+complaint. This was unjust, but there is no doubt he made use of
+every illustration to disgust or encourage his son that his
+neighbourhood afforded him, and did not spare his brother, for whom
+Richard entertained a contempt in proportion to his admiration of
+his father, and was for flying into penitential extremes which Sir
+Austin had to soften.
+
+The boy prayed with his father morning and night.
+
+"How is it, sir," he said one night, "I can't get Tom Bakewell to
+pray?"
+
+"Does he refuse?" Sir Austin asked.
+
+"He seems to be ashamed to," Richard replied. "He wants to know what
+is the good? and I don't know what to tell him."
+
+"I'm afraid it has gone too far with him," said Sir Austin, "and
+until he has had some deep sorrows he will not find the divine want
+of Prayer. Strive, my son, when you represent the people, to provide
+for their education. He feels everything now through a dull
+impenetrable rind. Culture is half-way to heaven. Tell him, my son,
+should he ever be brought to ask how he may know the efficacy of
+Prayer, and that his prayer will be answered, tell him (he quoted
+THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP):
+
+"'Who rises from Prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.'"
+
+"I will, sir," said Richard, and went to sleep happy.
+
+Happy in his father and in himself, the youth now lived. Conscience
+was beginning to inhabit him, and he carried some of the freightage
+known to men; though in so crude a form that it overweighed him, now
+on this side, now on that.
+
+The wise youth Adrian observed these further progressionary
+developments in his pupil, soberly cynical. He was under Sir
+Austin's interdict not to banter him, and eased his acrid humours
+inspired by the sight of a felonious young rick-burner turning
+saint, by grave affectations of sympathy and extreme accuracy in
+marking the not widely-distant dates of his various changes. The
+Bread-and-water phase lasted a fortnight: the Vegetarian (an
+imitation of his cousin Austin), a little better than a month: the
+religious, somewhat longer: the religious-propagandist (when he was
+for converting the heathen of Lobourne and Bursley, and the
+domestics of the Abbey, including Tom Bakewell), longer still, and
+hard to bear;--he tried to convert Adrian! All the while Tom was
+being exercised like a raw recruit. Richard had a drill-sergeant
+from the nearest barracks down for him, to give him a proper pride
+in himself, and marched him to and fro with immense satisfaction,
+and nearly broke his heart trying to get the round-shouldered rustic
+to take in the rudiments of letters: for the boy had unbounded hopes
+for Tom, as a hero in grain.
+
+Richard's pride also was cast aside. He affected to be, and really
+thought he was, humble. Whereupon Adrian, as by accident, imparted
+to him the fact that men were animals, and he an animal with the
+rest of them.
+
+"_I_ an animal!" cried Richard in scorn, and for weeks he was as
+troubled by this rudiment of self-knowledge as Tom by his letters.
+Sir Austin had him instructed in the wonders of anatomy, to restore
+his self-respect.
+
+SEED-TIME passed thus smoothly, and adolescence came on, and his
+cousin Clare felt what it was to be of an opposite sex to him. She
+too was growing, but nobody cared how she grew. Outwardly even her
+mother seemed absorbed in the sprouting of the green off-shoot of
+the Feverel tree, and Clare was his handmaiden, little marked by
+him.
+
+Lady Blandish honestly loved the boy. She would tell him: "If I had
+been a girl, I would have had you for my husband." And he with the
+frankness of his years would reply: "And how do you know I would
+have had you?" causing her to laugh and call him a silly boy, for
+had he not heard her say she would have had him? Terrible words, he
+knew not then the meaning of!
+
+"You don't read your father's Book," she said. Her own copy was
+bound in purple velvet, gilt-edged, as decorative ladies like to
+have holier books, and she carried it about with her, and quoted it,
+and (Adrian remarked to Mrs. Doria) hunted a noble quarry, and
+deliberately aimed at him therewith, which Mrs. Doria chose to
+believe, and regretted her brother would not be on his guard.
+
+"See here," said Lady Blandish, pressing an almondy finger-nail to
+one of the Aphorisms, which instanced how age and adversity must
+clay-enclose us ere we can effectually resist the magnetism of any
+human creature in our path. "Can you understand it, child?"
+
+Richard informed her that when she read he could.
+
+"Well, then, my squire," she touched his cheek and ran her fingers
+through his hair, "learn as quick as you can not to be all hither
+and yon with a hundred different attractions, as I was before I met
+a wise man to guide me."
+
+"Is my father very wise?" Richard asked.
+
+"I think so," the lady emphasized her individual judgment.
+
+"Do you----" Richard broke forth, and was stopped by a beating of
+his heart.
+
+"Do I--what?" she calmly queried.
+
+"I was going to say, do you--I mean, I love him so much."
+
+Lady Blandish smiled and slightly coloured.
+
+They frequently approached this theme, and always retreated from it;
+always with the same beating of heart to Richard, accompanied by the
+sense of a growing mystery, which, however, did not as yet generally
+disturb him.
+
+Life was made very pleasant to him at Raynham, as it was part of Sir
+Austin's principle of education that his boy should be thoroughly
+joyous and happy; and whenever Adrian sent in a satisfactory report
+of his pupil's advancement, which he did pretty liberally, diversions
+were planned, just as prizes are given to diligent schoolboys, and
+Richard was supposed to have all his desires gratified while he
+attended to his studies. The System flourished. Tall, strong,
+bloomingly healthy, he took the lead of his companions on land and
+water, and had more than one bondsman in his service besides Ripton
+Thompson--the boy without a Destiny! Perhaps the boy with a Destiny
+was growing up a trifle too conscious of it. His generosity to his
+occasional companions was princely, but was exercised something too
+much in the manner of a prince; and, notwithstanding his contempt for
+baseness, he would overlook that more easily than an offence to his
+pride, which demanded an utter servility when it had once been rendered
+susceptible. If Richard had his followers he had also his feuds. The
+Papworths were as subservient as Ripton, but young Ralph Morton,
+the nephew of Mr. Morton, and a match for Richard in numerous promising
+qualities, comprising the noble science of fisticuffs, this youth spoke
+his mind too openly, and moreover would not be snubbed. There was no
+middle course for Richard's comrades between high friendship or
+absolute slavery. He was deficient in those cosmopolite habits and
+feelings which enable boys and men to hold together without caring
+much for each other; and, like every insulated mortal, he attributed
+the deficiency, of which he was quite aware, to the fact of his
+possessing a superior nature. Young Ralph was a lively talker:
+therefore, argued Richard's vanity, he had no intellect. He was
+affable: therefore he was frivolous. The women liked him: therefore
+he was a butterfly. In fine, young Ralph was popular, and our superb
+prince, denied the privilege of despising, ended by detesting him.
+
+Early in the days of their contention for leadership, Richard saw
+the absurdity of affecting to scorn his rival. Ralph was an Eton
+boy, and hence, being robust, a swimmer and a cricketer. A swimmer
+and a cricketer is nowhere to be scorned in youth's republic.
+Finding that manoeuvre would not do, Richard was prompted once or
+twice to entrench himself behind his greater wealth and his
+position; but he soon abandoned that also, partly because his
+chilliness to ridicule told him he was exposing himself, and chiefly
+that his heart was too chivalrous. And so he was dragged into the
+lists by Ralph, and experienced the luck of champions. For cricket,
+and for diving, Ralph bore away the belt: Richard's middle-stump
+tottered before his ball, and he could seldom pick up more than
+three eggs under water to Ralph's half-dozen. He was beaten, too, in
+jumping and running. Why will silly mortals strive to the painful
+pinnacles of championship? Or why, once having reached them, not
+have the magnanimity and circumspection to retire into private life
+immediately? Stung by his defeats, Richard sent one of his dependent
+Papworths to Poer Hall, with a challenge to Ralph Barthrop Morton;
+matching himself to swim across the Thames and back, once, twice, or
+thrice, within a less time than he, Ralph Barthrop Morton, would
+require for the undertaking. It was accepted, and a reply returned,
+equally formal in the trumpeting of Christian names, wherein Ralph
+Barthrop Morton acknowledged the challenge of Richard Doria Feverel,
+and was his man. The match came off on a midsummer morning, under
+the direction of Captain Algernon. Sir Austin was a spectator from
+the cover of a plantation by the river-side, unknown to his son,
+and, to the scandal of her sex, Lady Blandish accompanied the
+baronet. He had invited her attendance, and she, obeying her frank
+nature, and knowing what THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP said about prudes, at
+once agreed to view the match, pleasing him mightily. For was not
+here a woman worthy the Golden Ages of the world? one who could look
+upon man as a creature divinely made, and look with a mind neither
+tempted, nor taunted, by the Serpent! Such a woman was rare. Sir
+Austin did not discompose her by uttering his praises. She was
+conscious of his approval only in an increased gentleness of manner,
+and something in his voice and communications, as if he were
+speaking to a familiar, a very high compliment from him. While the
+lads were standing ready for the signal to plunge from the steep
+decline of greensward into the shining water, Sir Austin called upon
+her to admire their beauty, and she did, and even advanced her head
+above his shoulder delicately. In so doing, and just as the start
+was given, a bonnet became visible to Richard. Young Ralph was
+heels in air before he moved, and then he dropped like lead. He was
+beaten by several lengths.
+
+The result of the match was unaccountable to all present, and
+Richard's friends unanimously pressed him to plead a false start.
+But though the youth, with full confidence in his better style and
+equal strength, had backed himself heavily against his rival, and
+had lost his little river-yacht to Ralph, he would do nothing of the
+sort. It was the Bonnet had beaten him, not Ralph. The Bonnet,
+typical of the mystery that caused his heart those violent
+palpitations, was his dear, detestable enemy.
+
+And now, as he progressed from mood to mood, his ambition turned
+towards a field where Ralph could not rival him, and where the
+Bonnet was etherealized, and reigned glorious mistress. A check to
+the pride of a boy will frequently divert him to the path where lie
+his subtlest powers. Richard gave up his companions, servile or
+antagonistic: he relinquished the material world to young Ralph, and
+retired into himself, where he was growing to be lord of kingdoms:
+where Beauty was his handmaid, and History his minister, and Time
+his ancient harper, and sweet Romance his bride; where he walked in
+a realm vaster and more gorgeous than the great Orient, peopled with
+the heroes that have been. For there is no princely wealth, and no
+loftiest heritage, to equal this early one that is made bountifully
+common to so many, when the ripening blood has put a spark to the
+imagination, and the earth is seen through rosy mists of a thousand
+fresh-awakened nameless and aimless desires; panting for bliss and
+taking it as it comes; making of any sight or sound, perforce of the
+enchantment they carry with them, a key to infinite, because
+innocent, pleasure. The passions then are gambolling cubs; not the
+ravaging gluttons they grow to. They have their teeth and their
+talons, but they neither tear nor bite. They are in counsel and
+fellowship with the quickened heart and brain. The whole sweet
+system moves to music.
+
+Something akin to the indications of a change in the spirit of his
+son, which were now seen, Sir Austin had marked down to be expected,
+as due to his plan. The blushes of the youth, his long vigils, his
+clinging to solitude, his abstraction, and downcast but not
+melancholy air, were matters for rejoicing to the prescient
+gentleman. "For it comes," said he to Dr. Clifford of Lobourne,
+after consulting him medically on the youth's behalf and being
+assured of his soundness, "it comes of a thoroughly sane condition.
+The blood is healthy, the mind virtuous: neither instigates the
+other to evil, and both are perfecting toward the flower of manhood.
+If he reach that pure--in the untainted fulness and perfection of
+his natural powers--I am indeed a happy father! But one thing he
+will owe to me: that at one period of his life he knew paradise, and
+could read God's handwriting on the earth! Now those abominations
+whom you call precocious boys--your little pet monsters,
+doctor!--and who can wonder that the world is what it is? when it is
+full of them--as they will have no divine time to look back upon in
+their own lives, how can they believe in innocence and goodness, or
+be other than sons of selfishness and the Devil? But my boy," and
+the baronet dropped his voice to a key that was touching to hear,
+"my boy, if he fall, will fall from an actual region of purity. He
+dare not be a sceptic as to that. Whatever his darkness, he will
+have the guiding light of a memory behind him. So much is secure."
+
+To talk nonsense, or poetry, or the dash between the two, in a tone
+of profound sincerity, and to enunciate solemn discordances with
+received opinion so seriously as to convey the impression of a
+spiritual insight, is the peculiar gift by which monomaniacs, having
+first persuaded themselves, to contrive to influence their
+neighbours, and through them to make conquest of a good half of the
+world, for good or for ill. Sir Austin had this gift. He spoke as if
+he saw the truth, and, persisting in it so long, he was accredited
+by those who did not understand him, and silenced them that did.
+
+"We shall see," was all the argument left to Dr. Clifford, and other
+unbelievers.
+
+So far certainly the experiment had succeeded. A comelier, braver,
+better boy was nowhere to be met. His promise was undeniable. The
+vessel, too, though it lay now in harbour and had not yet been
+proved by the buffets of the elements on the great ocean, had made a
+good trial trip, and got well through stormy weather, as the records
+of the Bakewell Comedy witnessed to at Raynham. No augury could be
+hopefuller. The Fates must indeed be hard, the Ordeal severe, the
+Destiny dark, that could destroy so bright a Spring! But, bright as
+it was, the baronet relaxed nothing of his vigilant supervision. He
+said to his intimates: "Every act, every fostered inclination,
+almost every thought in this Blossoming Season, bears its seed for
+the Future. The living Tree now requires incessant watchfulness."
+And, acting up to his light, Sir Austin did watch. The youth
+submitted to an examination every night before he sought his bed;
+professedly to give an account of his studies, but really to
+recapitulate his moral experiences of the day. He could do so, for
+he was pure. Any wildness in him that his father noted, any
+remoteness or richness of fancy in his expressions, was set down as
+incidental to the Blossoming Season. There is nothing like a theory
+for binding the wise. Sir Austin, despite his rigid watch and ward,
+knew less of his son than the servant of his household. And he was
+deaf, as well as blind. Adrian thought it his duty to tell him that
+the youth was consuming paper. Lady Blandish likewise hinted at his
+mooning propensities. Sir Austin from his lofty watch-tower of the
+System had foreseen it, he said. But when he came to hear that the
+youth was writing poetry, his wounded heart had its reasons for
+being much disturbed.
+
+"Surely," said Lady Blandish, "you knew he scribbled?"
+
+"A very different thing from writing poetry," said the baronet. "No
+Feverel has ever written poetry."
+
+"I don't think it's a sign of degeneracy," the lady remarked. "He
+rhymes very prettily to me."
+
+A London phrenologist, and a friendly Oxford Professor of poetry,
+quieted Sir Austin's fears.
+
+The phrenologist said he was totally deficient in the imitative
+faculty; and the Professor, that he was equally so in the rhythmic,
+and instanced several consoling false quantities in a few effusions
+submitted to him. Added to this, Sir Austin told Lady Blandish that
+Richard had, at his best, done what no poet had ever been known to
+be capable of doing: he had, with his own hands, and in cold blood,
+committed his virgin manuscript to the flames: which made Lady
+Blandish sigh forth, "Poor boy!"
+
+Killing one's darling child is a painful imposition. For a youth in
+his Blossoming Season, who fancies himself a poet, to be requested
+to destroy his first-born, without a reason (though to pretend a
+reason cogent enough to justify the request were a mockery), is a
+piece of abhorrent despotism, and Richard's blossoms withered under
+it. A strange man had been introduced to him, who traversed and
+bisected his skull with sagacious stiff fingers, and crushed his
+soul while, in an infallible voice, declaring him the animal he was:
+making him feel such an animal! Not only his blossoms withered, his
+being seemed to draw in its shoots and twigs. And when, coupled
+thereunto (the strange man having departed, his work done), his
+father, in his tenderest manner, stated that it would give him
+pleasure to see those same precocious, utterly valueless,
+scribblings among the cinders, the last remaining mental blossom
+spontaneously fell away. Richard's spirit stood bare. He protested
+not. Enough that it could be wished! He would not delay a minute in
+doing it. Desiring his father to follow him, he went to a drawer in
+his room, and from a clean-linen recess, never suspected by Sir
+Austin, the secretive youth drew out bundle after bundle: each
+neatly tied, named, and numbered: and pitched them into flames. And
+so Farewell my young Ambition! and with it farewell all true
+confidence between Father and Son.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE MAGNETIC AGE
+
+
+It was now, as Sir Austin had written it down, The Magnetic Age: the
+Age of violent attractions, when to hear mention of love is
+dangerous, and to see it, a communication of the disease. People at
+Raynham were put on their guard by the baronet, and his reputation
+for wisdom was severely criticized in consequence of the injunctions
+he thought fit to issue through butler and housekeeper down to the
+lower household, for the preservation of his son from any visible
+symptom of the passion. A footman and two housemaids are believed
+to have been dismissed on the report of heavy Benson that they were
+in or inclining to the state; upon which an under-cook and a
+dairymaid voluntarily threw up their places, averring that "they did
+not want no young men, but to have their sex spied after by an old
+wretch like that," indicating the ponderous butler, "was a little
+too much for a Christian woman," and then they were ungenerous
+enough to glance at Benson's well-known marital calamity, hinting
+that some men met their deserts. So intolerable did heavy Benson's
+espionage become, that Raynham would have grown depopulated of its
+womankind had not Adrian interfered, who pointed out to the baronet
+what a fearful arm his butler was wielding. Sir Austin acknowledged
+it despondently. "It only shows," said he, with a fine spirit of
+justice, "how all but impossible it is to legislate where there are
+women!"
+
+"I do not object," he added; "I hope I am too just to object to the
+exercise of their natural inclinations. All I ask from them is
+discreetness."
+
+"Ay," said Adrian, whose discreetness was a marvel.
+
+"No gadding about in couples," continued the baronet, "no kissing in
+public. Such occurrences no boy should witness. Whenever people of
+both sexes are thrown together, they will be silly; and where they
+are high-fed, uneducated, and barely occupied, it must be looked for
+as a matter of course. Let it be known that I only require
+discreetness."
+
+Discreetness, therefore, was instructed to reign at the Abbey. Under
+Adrian's able tuition the fairest of its domestics acquired that
+virtue.
+
+Discreetness, too, was enjoined to the upper household. Sir Austin,
+who had not previously appeared to notice the case of Lobourne's
+hopeless curate, now desired Mrs. Doria to interdict, or at least
+discourage, his visits, for the appearance of the man was that of an
+embodied sigh and groan.
+
+"Really, Austin!" said Mrs. Doria, astonished to find her brother
+more awake than she had supposed, "I have never allowed him to
+hope."
+
+"Let him see it, then," replied the baronet; "let him see it."
+
+"The man amuses me," said Mrs. Doria. "You know, we have few
+amusements here, we inferior creatures. I confess I should like a
+barrel-organ better; that reminds one of town and the opera; and
+besides, it plays more than one tune. However, since you think my
+society bad for him, let him stop away."
+
+With the self-devotion of a woman she grew patient and sweet the
+moment her daughter Clare was spoken of, and the business of her
+life in view. Mrs. Doria's maternal heart had betrothed the two
+cousins, Richard and Clare; had already beheld them espoused and
+fruitful. For this she yielded the pleasures of town; for this she
+immured herself at Raynham; for this she bore with a thousand
+follies, exactions, inconveniences, things abhorrent to her, and
+heaven knows what forms of torture and self-denial, which are
+smilingly endured by that greatest of voluntary martyrs--a mother
+with a daughter to marry. Mrs. Doria, an amiable widow, had surely
+married but for her daughter Clare. The lady's hair no woman could
+possess without feeling it her pride. It was the daily theme of her
+lady's-maid,--a natural aureole to her head. She was gay, witty,
+still physically youthful enough to claim a destiny; and she
+sacrificed it to accomplish her daughter's! sacrificed, as with
+heroic scissors, hair, wit, gaiety--let us not attempt to enumerate
+how much! more than may be said. And she was only one of thousands;
+thousands who have no portion of the hero's reward; for he may
+reckon on applause, and condolence, and sympathy, and honour; they,
+poor slaves! must look for nothing but the opposition of their own
+sex and the sneers of ours. O, Sir Austin! had you not been so
+blinded, what an Aphorism might have sprung from this point of
+observation! Mrs. Doria was coolly told, between sister and brother,
+that during the Magnetic Age her daughter's presence at Raynham was
+undesirable. Instead of nursing offence, her sole thought was the
+mountain of prejudice she had to contend against. She bowed, and
+said, Clare wanted sea-air--she had never quite recovered the shock
+of that dreadful night. How long, Mrs. Doria wished to know, might
+the Peculiar Period be expected to last?
+
+"That," said Sir Austin, "depends. A year, perhaps, he is entering
+on it. I shall be most grieved to lose you, Helen. Clare is now--how
+old?"
+
+"Seventeen."
+
+"She is marriageable."
+
+"Marriageable, Austin! at seventeen! don't name such a thing. My
+child shall not be robbed of her youth."
+
+"Our women marry early, Helen."
+
+"My child shall not!"
+
+The baronet reflected a moment. He did not wish to lose his sister.
+
+"As you are of that opinion, Helen," said he, "perhaps we may still
+make arrangements to retain you with us. Would you think it
+advisable to send Clare--she should know discipline--to some
+establishment for a few months?"...
+
+"To an asylum, Austin?" cried Mrs. Doria, controlling her
+indignation as well as she could.
+
+"To some select superior seminary, Helen. There are such to be
+found."
+
+"Austin!" Mrs. Doria exclaimed, and had to fight with a moisture in
+her eyes. "Unjust! absurd!" she murmured. The baronet thought it a
+natural proposition that Clare should be a bride or a schoolgirl.
+
+"I cannot leave my child." Mrs. Doria trembled. "Where she goes, I
+go. I am aware that she is only one of our sex, and therefore of no
+value to the world, but she is my child. I will see, poor dear, that
+you have no cause to complain of her."
+
+"I thought," Sir Austin remarked, "that you acquiesced in my views
+with regard to my son."
+
+"Yes--generally," said Mrs. Doria, and felt culpable that she had
+not before, and could not then, tell her brother that he had set up
+an Idol in his house--an Idol of flesh! more retributive and
+abominable than wood or brass or gold. But she had bowed to the Idol
+too long--she had too entirely bound herself to gain her project by
+subserviency. She had, and she dimly perceived it, committed a
+greater fault in tactics, in teaching her daughter to bow to the
+Idol also. Love of that kind Richard took for tribute. He was
+indifferent to Clare's soft eyes. The parting kiss he gave her was
+ready and cold as his father could desire. Sir Austin now grew
+eloquent to him in laudation of manly pursuits: but Richard thought
+his eloquence barren, his attempts at companionship awkward, and all
+manly pursuits and aims, life itself, vain and worthless. To what
+end? sighed the blossomless youth, and cried aloud, as soon as he
+was relieved of his father's society, what was the good of anything?
+Whatever he did--whichever path he selected, led back to Raynham.
+And whatever he did, however wretched and wayward he showed himself,
+only confirmed Sir Austin more and more in the truth of his
+previsions. Tom Bakewell, now the youth's groom, had to give the
+baronet a report of his young master's proceedings, in common with
+Adrian, and while there was no harm to tell, Tom spoke out. "He do
+ride like fire every day to Pig's Snout," naming the highest hill in
+the neighbourhood, "and stand there and stare, never movin', like a
+mad 'un. And then hoam agin all slack as if he'd been beaten in a
+race by somebody."
+
+"There is no woman in that!" mused the baronet. "He would have
+ridden back as hard as he went," reflected this profound scientific
+humanist, "had there been a woman in it. He would shun vast
+expanses, and seek shade, concealment, solitude. The desire for
+distances betokens emptiness and undirected hunger: when the heart
+is possessed by an image we fly to wood and forest, like the
+guilty."
+
+Adrian's report accused his pupil of an extraordinary access of
+cynicism.
+
+"Exactly," said the baronet. "As I foresaw. At this period an
+insatiate appetite is accompanied by a fastidious palate. Nothing
+but the quintessences of existence, and those in exhaustless
+supplies, will satisfy this craving, which is not to be satisfied!
+Hence his bitterness. Life can furnish no food fitting for him. The
+strength and purity of his energies have reached to an almost divine
+height, and roam through the Inane. Poetry, love, and such-like, are
+the drugs earth has to offer to high natures, as she offers to low
+ones debauchery. 'Tis a sign, this sourness, that he is subject to
+none of the empiricisms that are afloat. Now to keep him clear of
+them!"
+
+The Titans had an easier task in storming Olympus. As yet, however,
+it could not be said that Sir Austin's System had failed. On the
+contrary, it had reared a youth, handsome, intelligent, well-bred,
+and, observed the ladies, with acute emphasis, innocent. Where, they
+asked, was such another young man to be found?
+
+"Oh!" said Lady Blandish to Sir Austin, "if men could give their
+hands to women unsoiled--how different would many a marriage be! She
+will be a happy girl who calls Richard husband."
+
+"Happy, indeed!" was the baronet's caustic ejaculation. "But where
+shall I meet one equal to him, and his match?"
+
+"I was innocent when I was a girl," said the lady.
+
+Sir Austin bowed a reserved opinion.
+
+"Do you think no girls innocent?"
+
+Sir Austin gallantly thought them all so.
+
+"No, that you know they are not," said the lady, stamping. "But they
+are more innocent than boys, I am sure."
+
+"Because of their education, madam. You see now what a youth can be.
+Perhaps, when my System is published, or rather--to speak more
+humbly--when it is practised, the balance may be restored, and we
+shall have virtuous young men."
+
+"It's too late for poor me to hope for a husband from one of them,"
+said the lady, pouting and laughing.
+
+"It is never too late for beauty to waken love," returned the
+baronet, and they trifled a little. They were approaching Daphne's
+Bower, which they entered, and sat there to taste the coolness of a
+descending midsummer day.
+
+The baronet seemed in a humour for dignified fooling; the lady for
+serious converse.
+
+"I shall believe again in Arthur's knights," she said. "When I was a
+girl I dreamed of one."
+
+"And he was in quest of the San Greal?"
+
+"If you like."
+
+"And showed his good taste by turning aside for the more tangible
+San Blandish?"
+
+"Of course you consider it would have been so," sighed the lady,
+ruffling.
+
+"I can only judge by our generation," said Sir Austin, with a bend
+of homage.
+
+The lady gathered her mouth. "Either we are very mighty or you are
+very weak."
+
+"Both, madam."
+
+"But whatever we are, and if we are bad, bad! we love virtue, and
+truth, and lofty souls, in men: and, when we meet those qualities in
+them, we are constant, and would die for them--die for them. Ah! you
+know men but not women."
+
+"The knights possessing such distinctions must be young, I presume?"
+said Sir Austin.
+
+"Old, or young!"
+
+"But if old, they are scarce capable of enterprise?"
+
+"They are loved for themselves, not for their deeds."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Yes--ah!" said the lady. "Intellect may subdue women--make slaves
+of them; and they worship beauty perhaps as much as you do. But they
+only love for ever and are mated when they meet a noble nature."
+
+Sir Austin looked at her wistfully.
+
+"And did you encounter the knight of your dream?"
+
+"Not then." She lowered her eyelids. It was prettily done.
+
+"And how did you bear the disappointment?"
+
+"My dream was in the nursery. The day my frock was lengthened to a
+gown I stood at the altar. I am not the only girl that has been made
+a woman in a day, and given to an ogre instead of a true knight."
+
+"Good God!" exclaimed Sir Austin, "women have much to bear."
+
+Here the couple changed characters. The lady became gay as the
+baronet grew earnest.
+
+"You know it is our lot," she said. "And we are allowed many
+amusements. If we fulfil our duty in producing children, that, like
+our virtue, is its own reward. Then, as a widow, I have wonderful
+privileges."
+
+"To preserve which, you remain a widow?"
+
+"Certainly," she responded. "I have no trouble now in patching and
+piecing that rag the world calls--a character. I can sit at your
+feet every day unquestioned. To be sure, others do the same, but
+they are female eccentrics, and have cast off the rag altogether."
+
+Sir Austin drew nearer to her. "You would have made an admirable
+mother, madam."
+
+This from Sir Austin was very like positive wooing.
+
+"It is," he continued, "ten thousand pities that you are not one."
+
+"Do you think so?" She spoke with humility.
+
+"I would," he went on, "that heaven had given you a daughter."
+
+"Would you have thought her worthy of Richard?"
+
+"Our blood, madam, should have been one!"
+
+The lady tapped her toe with her parasol. "But I am a mother," she
+said. "Richard is my son. Yes! Richard is my boy," she reiterated.
+
+Sir Austin most graciously appended, "Call him ours, madam," and
+held his head as if to catch the word from her lips, which, however,
+she chose to refuse, or defer. They made the coloured West a common
+point for their eyes, and then Sir Austin said:
+
+"As you will not say 'ours,' let me. And, as you have therefore an
+equal claim on the boy, I will confide to you a project I have
+lately conceived."
+
+The announcement of a project hardly savoured of a coming proposal,
+but for Sir Austin to confide one to a woman was almost tantamount
+to a declaration. So Lady Blandish thought, and so said her soft,
+deep-eyed smile, as she perused the ground while listening to the
+project. It concerned Richard's nuptials. He was now nearly
+eighteen. He was to marry when he was five-and-twenty. Meantime a
+young lady, some years his junior, was to be sought for in the homes
+of England, who would be every way fitted by education, instincts,
+and blood--on each of which qualifications Sir Austin unreservedly
+enlarged--to espouse so perfect a youth and accept the honourable
+duty of assisting in the perpetuation of the Feverels. The baronet
+went on to say that he proposed to set forth immediately, and devote
+a couple of months, to the first essay in his Coelebite search.
+
+"I fear," said Lady Blandish, when the project had been fully
+unfolded, "you have laid down for yourself a difficult task. You
+must not be too exacting."
+
+"I know it." The baronet's shake of the head was piteous.
+
+"Even in England she will be rare. But I confine myself to no class.
+If I ask for blood it is for untainted, not what you call high
+blood. I believe many of the middle classes are frequently more
+careful--more pure-blooded--than our aristocracy. Show me among them
+a God-fearing family who educate their children--I should prefer a
+girl without brothers and sisters--as a Christian damsel should be
+educated--say; on the model of my son, and she may be penniless, I
+will pledge her to Richard Feverel."
+
+Lady Blandish bit her lip. "And what do you do with Richard while
+you are absent on this expedition?"
+
+"Oh!" said the baronet, "he accompanies his father."
+
+"Then give it up. His future bride is now pinafored and
+bread-and-buttery. She romps, she cries, she dreams of play and
+pudding. How can he care for her? He thinks more at his age of old
+women like me. He will be certain to kick against her, and destroy
+your plan, believe me, Sir Austin."
+
+"Ay? ay? do you think that?" said the baronet.
+
+Lady Blandish gave him a multitude of reasons.
+
+"Ay! true," he muttered. "Adrian said the same. He must not see her.
+How could I think of it! The child is naked woman. He would despise
+her. Naturally!"
+
+"Naturally!" echoed the lady.
+
+"Then, madam," and the baronet rose, "there is one thing for me to
+determine upon. I must, for the first time in his life, leave him."
+
+"Will you, indeed?" said the lady.
+
+"It is my duty, having thus brought him up, to see that he is
+properly mated,--not wrecked upon the quicksands of marriage, as a
+youth so delicately trained might be; more easily than another!
+Betrothed, he will be safe from a thousand snares. I may, I think,
+leave him for a term. My precautions have saved him from the
+temptations of his season."
+
+"And under whose charge will you leave him?" Lady Blandish inquired.
+
+She had emerged from the temple, and stood beside Sir Austin on the
+upper steps, under a clear summer twilight.
+
+"Madam!" he took her hand, and his voice was gallant and tender,
+"under whose but yours?"
+
+As the baronet said this, he bent above her hand, and raised it to
+his lips.
+
+Lady Blandish felt that she had been wooed and asked in wedlock. She
+did not withdraw her hand. The baronet's salute was flatteringly
+reverent. He deliberated over it, as one going through a grave
+ceremony. And he, the scorner of women, had chosen her for his
+homage! Lady Blandish forgot that she had taken some trouble to
+arrive at it. She received the exquisite compliment in all its
+unique honey-sweet: for in love we must deserve nothing or the fine
+bloom of fruition is gone.
+
+The lady's hand was still in durance, and the baronet had not
+recovered from his profound inclination, when a noise from the
+neighbouring beechwood startled the two actors in this courtly
+pantomime. They turned their heads, and beheld the hope of Raynham
+on horseback surveying the scene. The next moment he had galloped
+away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+AN ATTRACTION
+
+
+All night Richard tossed on his bed with his heart in a rapid
+canter, and his brain bestriding it, traversing the rich untasted
+world, and the great Realm of Mystery, from which he was now
+restrained no longer. Months he had wandered about the gates of the
+Bonnet, wondering, sighing, knocking at them, and getting neither
+admittance nor answer. He had the key now. His own father had given
+it to him. His heart was a lightning steed, and bore him on and on
+over limitless regions bathed in super-human beauty and strangeness,
+where cavaliers and ladies leaned whispering upon close green
+swards, and knights and ladies cast a splendour upon savage forests,
+and tilts and tourneys were held in golden courts lit to a glorious
+day by ladies' eyes, one pair of which, dimly visioned, constantly
+distinguishable, followed him through the boskage and dwelt upon him
+in the press, beaming while he bent above a hand glittering white
+and fragrant as the frosted blossom of a May night.
+
+Awhile the heart would pause and flutter to a shock: he was in the
+act of consummating all earthly bliss by pressing his lips to the
+small white hand. Only to do that, and die! cried the Magnetic
+Youth: to fling the Jewel of Life into that one cup and drink it
+off! He was intoxicated by anticipation. For that he was born.
+There was, then, some end in existence, something to live for! to
+kiss a woman's hand, and die! He would leap from the couch, and rush
+to pen and paper to relieve his swarming sensations. Scarce was he
+seated when the pen was dashed aside, the paper sent flying with the
+exclamation, "Have I not sworn I would never write again?" Sir
+Austin had shut that safety-valve. The nonsense that was in the
+youth might have poured harmlessly out, and its urgency for
+ebullition was so great that he was repeatedly oblivious of his
+oath, and found himself seated under the lamp in the act of
+composition before pride could speak a word. Possibly the pride even
+of Richard Feverel had been swamped if the act of composition were
+easy at such a time, and a single idea could stand clearly foremost;
+but myriads were demanding the first place; chaotic hosts, like
+ranks of stormy billows, pressed impetuously for expression, and
+despair of reducing them to form, quite as much as pride, to which
+it pleased him to refer his incapacity, threw down the powerless
+pen, and sent him panting to his outstretched length and another
+headlong career through the rosy-girdled land.
+
+Toward morning the madness of the fever abated somewhat, and he went
+forth into the air. A lamp was still burning in his father's room,
+and Richard thought, as he looked up, that he saw the ever-vigilant
+head on the watch. Instantly the lamp was extinguished, the window
+stood cold against the hues of dawn.
+
+Strong pulling is an excellent medical remedy for certain classes of
+fever. Richard took to it instinctively. The clear fresh water,
+burnished with sunrise, sparkled against his arrowy prow; the soft
+deep shadows curled smiling away from his gliding keel. Overhead
+solitary morning unfolded itself, from blossom to bud, from bud to
+flower; still, delicious changes of light and colour, to whose
+influences he was heedless as he shot under willows and aspens, and
+across sheets of river-reaches, pure mirrors to the upper glory,
+himself the sole tenant of the stream. Somewhere at the founts of
+the world lay the land he was rowing toward; something of its
+shadowed lights might be discerned here and there. It was not a
+dream, now he knew. There was a secret abroad. The woods were full
+of it; the waters rolled with it, and the winds. Oh, why could not
+one in these days do some high knightly deed which should draw down
+ladies' eyes from their heaven, as in the days of Arthur! To such a
+meaning breathed the unconscious sighs of the youth, when he had
+pulled through his first feverish energy.
+
+He was off Bursley, and had lapsed a little into that musing
+quietude which follows strenuous exercise, when he heard a hail and
+his own name called. It was no lady, no fairy, but young Ralph
+Morton, an irruption of miserable masculine prose. Heartily wishing
+him abed with the rest of mankind, Richard rowed in and jumped
+ashore. Ralph immediately seized his arm, saying that he desired
+earnestly to have a talk with him, and dragged the Magnetic Youth
+from his water-dreams, up and down the wet mown grass. That he had
+to say seemed to be difficult of utterance, and Richard, though he
+barely listened, soon had enough of his old rival's gladness at
+seeing him, and exhibited signs of impatience; whereat Ralph, as one
+who branches into matter somewhat foreign to his mind, but of great
+human interest and importance, put the question to him:
+
+"I say, what woman's name do you like best?"
+
+"I don't know any," quoth Richard, indifferently. "Why are you out
+so early?"
+
+In answer to this, Ralph suggested that the name of Mary might be
+considered a pretty name.
+
+Richard agreed that it might be; the housekeeper at Raynham, half
+the women cooks, and all the housemaids enjoyed that name; the name
+of Mary was equivalent for women at home.
+
+"Yes, I know," said Ralph. "We have lots of Marys. It's so common.
+Oh! I don't like Mary best. What do you think of Lucy?"
+
+Richard thought it just like another.
+
+"Do you know," Ralph continued, throwing off the mask and plunging
+into the subject, "I'd do anything on earth for some names--one or
+two. It's not Mary, nor Lucy. Clarinda's pretty, but it's like a
+novel. Claribel, I like. Names beginning with 'Cl' I prefer. The
+'Cl's' are always gentle and lovely girls you would die for! Don't
+you think so?"
+
+Richard had never been acquainted with any of them to inspire that
+emotion. Indeed these urgent appeals to his fancy in feminine names
+at five o'clock in the morning slightly surprised him, though he was
+but half awake to the outer world. By degrees he perceived that
+Ralph was changed. Instead of the lusty boisterous boy, his rival in
+manly sciences, who spoke straightforwardly and acted up to his
+speech, here was an abashed and blush-persecuted youth, who sued
+piteously for a friendly ear wherein to pour the one idea possessing
+him. Gradually, too, Richard apprehended that Ralph likewise was on
+the frontiers of the Realm of Mystery, perhaps further toward it
+than he himself was; and then, as by a sympathetic stroke, was
+revealed to him the wonderful beauty and depth of meaning in
+feminine names. The theme appeared novel and delicious, fitted to
+the season and the hour. But the hardship was, that Richard could
+choose none from the number; all were the same to him; he loved them
+all.
+
+"Don't you really prefer the 'Cl's'?" said Ralph, persuasively.
+
+"Not better than the names ending in 'a' and 'y,'" Richard replied,
+wishing he could, for Ralph was evidently ahead of him.
+
+"Come under these trees," said Ralph. And under the trees Ralph
+unbosomed. His name was down for the army: Eton was quitted for
+ever. In a few months he would have to join his regiment, and before
+he left he must say good-bye to his friends.... Would Richard tell
+him Mrs. Forey's address? he had heard she was somewhere by the sea.
+Richard did not remember the address, but said he would willingly
+take charge of any letter and forward it.
+
+Ralph dived his hand into his pocket. "Here it is. But don't let
+anybody see it."
+
+"My aunt's name is not Clare," said Richard, perusing what was
+composed of the exterior formula. "You've addressed it to Clare
+herself."
+
+That was plain to see.
+
+"Emmeline Clementina Matilda Laura, Countess Blandish," Richard
+continued in a low tone, transferring the names, and playing on the
+musical strings they were to him. Then he said: "Names of ladies!
+How they sweeten their names!"
+
+He fixed his eyes on Ralph. If he discovered anything further he
+said nothing, but bade the good fellow good-bye, jumped into his
+boat, and pulled down the tide. The moment Ralph was hidden by an
+abutment of the banks, Richard perused the address. For the first
+time it struck him that his cousin Clare was a very charming
+creature: he remembered the look of her eyes, and especially the
+last reproachful glance she gave him at parting. What business had
+Ralph to write to her? Did she not belong to Richard Feverel? He
+read the words again and again: Clare Doria Forey. Why, Clare was
+the name he liked best--nay, he loved it. Doria, too--she shared his
+own name with him. Away went his heart, not at a canter now, at a
+gallop, as one who sights the quarry. He felt too weak to pull.
+Clare Doria Forey---oh, perfect melody! Sliding with the tide, he
+heard it fluting in the bosom of the hills.
+
+When nature has made us ripe for love, it seldom occurs that the
+Fates are behindhand in furnishing a temple for the flame.
+
+Above green-flashing plunges of a weir, and shaken by the thunder
+below, lilies, golden and white, were swaying at anchor among the
+reeds. Meadow-sweet hung from the banks thick with weed and trailing
+bramble, and there also hung a daughter of earth. Her face was
+shaded by a broad straw hat with a flexible brim that left her lips
+and chin in the sun, and, sometimes nodding, sent forth a light of
+promising eyes. Across her shoulders, and behind, flowed large loose
+curls, brown in shadow, almost golden where the ray touched them.
+She was simply dressed, befitting decency and the season. On a
+closer inspection you might see that her lips were stained. This
+blooming young person was regaling on dewberries. They grew between
+the bank and the water. Apparently she found the fruit abundant, for
+her hand was making pretty progress to her mouth. Fastidious youth,
+which revolts at woman plumping her exquisite proportions on
+bread-and-butter, and would (we must suppose) joyfully have her
+scraggy to have her poetical, can hardly object to dewberries.
+Indeed the act of eating them is dainty and induces musing. The
+dewberry is a sister to the lotus, and an innocent sister. You eat:
+mouth, eye, and hand are occupied, and the undrugged mind free to
+roam. And so it was with the damsel who knelt there. The little
+skylark went up above her, all song, to the smooth southern cloud
+lying along the blue: from a dewy copse dark over her nodding hat
+the blackbird fluted, calling to her with thrice mellow note: the
+kingfisher flashed emerald out of green osiers: a bow-winged heron
+travelled aloft, seeking solitude: a boat slipped toward her,
+containing a dreamy youth; and still she plucked the fruit, and ate,
+and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading her territories, and
+as if she wished not for one, or knew not her wishes. Surrounded by
+the green shaven meadows, the pastoral summer buzz, the weir-fall's
+thundering white, amid the breath and beauty of wild flowers, she
+was a bit of lovely human life in a fair setting; a terrible
+attraction. The Magnetic Youth leaned round to note his proximity to
+the weir-piles, and beheld the sweet vision. Stiller and stiller
+grew nature, as at the meeting of two electric clouds. Her posture
+was so graceful, that though he was making straight for the weir, he
+dared not dip a scull. Just then one enticing dewberry caught her
+eyes. He was floating by unheeded, and saw that her hand stretched
+low, and could not gather what it sought. A stroke from his right
+brought him beside her. The damsel glanced up dismayed, and her
+whole shape trembled over the brink. Richard sprang from his boat
+into the water. Pressing a hand beneath her foot, which she had
+thrust against the crumbling wet sides of the bank to save herself,
+he enabled her to recover her balance, and gain safe earth, whither
+he followed her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+FERDINAND AND MIRANDA
+
+
+He had landed on an island of the still-vexed Bermoothes. The world
+lay wrecked behind him: Raynham hung in mists, remote, a phantom to
+the vivid reality of this white hand which had drawn him thither
+away thousands of leagues in an eye-twinkle. Hark, how Ariel sang
+overhead! What splendour in the heavens! What marvels of beauty
+about his enchanted brows! And, O you wonder! Fair Flame! by whose
+light the glories of being are now first seen.... Radiant Miranda!
+Prince Ferdinand is at your feet.
+
+Or is it Adam, his rib taken from his side in sleep, and thus
+transformed, to make him behold his Paradise, and lose it?...
+
+The youth looked on her with as glowing an eye. It was the First
+Woman to him.
+
+And she--mankind was all Caliban to her, saving this one princely
+youth.
+
+So to each other said their changing eyes in the moment they stood
+together; he pale, and she blushing.
+
+She was indeed sweetly fair, and would have been held fair among
+rival damsels. On a magic shore, and to a youth educated by a
+System, strung like an arrow drawn to the head, he, it might be
+guessed, could fly fast and far with her. The soft rose in her
+cheeks, the clearness of her eyes, bore witness to the body's
+virtue; and health and happy blood were in her bearing. Had she
+stood before Sir Austin among rival damsels, that Scientific
+Humanist, for the consummation of his System, would have thrown her
+the handkerchief for his son. The wide summer-hat, nodding over her
+forehead to her brows, seemed to flow with the flowing heavy curls,
+and those fire-threaded mellow curls, only half-curls, waves of hair
+call them, rippling at the ends, went like a sunny red-veined
+torrent down her back almost to her waist: a glorious vision to the
+youth, who embraced it as a flower of beauty, and read not a
+feature. There were curious features of colour in her face for him
+to have read. Her brows, thick and brownish against a soft skin
+showing the action of the blood, met in the bend of a bow, extending
+to the temples long and level: you saw that she was fashioned to
+peruse the sights of earth, and by the pliability of her brows that
+the wonderful creature used her faculty, and was not going to be a
+statue to the gazer. Under the dark thick brows an arch of lashes
+shot out, giving a wealth of darkness to the full frank blue eyes, a
+mystery of meaning--more than brain was ever meant to fathom:
+richer, henceforth, than all mortal wisdom to Prince Ferdinand. For
+when nature turns artist, and produces contrasts of colour on a fair
+face, where is the Sage, or what the Oracle, shall match the depth
+of its lightest look?
+
+Prince Ferdinand was also fair. In his slim boating-attire his
+figure looked heroic. His hair, rising from the parting to the right
+of his forehead, in what his admiring Lady Blandish called his
+plume, fell away slanting silkily to the temples across the nearly
+imperceptible upward curve of his brows there--felt more than seen,
+so slight it was--and gave to his profile a bold beauty, to which
+his bashful, breathless air was a flattering charm. An arrow drawn
+to the head, capable of flying fast and far with her! He leaned a
+little forward, drinking her in with all his eyes, and young Love
+has a thousand. Then truly the System triumphed, just ere it was to
+fall; and could Sir Austin have been content to draw the arrow to
+the head, and let it fly, when it would fly, he might have pointed
+to his son again, and said to the world, "Match him!" Such keen
+bliss as the youth had in the sight of her, an innocent youth alone
+has powers of soul in him to experience.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"O Women!" says THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP, in one of its solitary outbursts,
+"Women, who like, and will have for hero, a rake! how soon are you not
+to learn that you have taken bankrupts to your bosoms, and that the
+putrescent gold that attracted you is the slime of the Lake of Sin!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If these two were Ferdinand and Miranda, Sir Austin was not Prospero,
+and was not present, or their fates might have been different.
+
+So they stood a moment, changing eyes, and then Miranda spoke, and
+they came down to earth, feeling no less in heaven.
+
+She spoke to thank him for his aid. She used quite common simple words;
+and used them, no doubt, to express a common simple meaning: but to him
+she was uttering magic, casting spells, and the effect they had on him
+was manifested in the incoherence of his replies, which were too foolish
+to be chronicled.
+
+The couple were again mute. Suddenly Miranda, with an exclamation of
+anguish, and innumerable lights and shadows playing over her lovely
+face, clapped her hands, crying aloud, "My book! my book!" and ran to
+the bank.
+
+Prince Ferdinand was at her side. "What have you lost?" he said.
+
+"My book!" she answered, her delicious curls swinging across her
+shoulders to the stream. Then turning to him, "Oh, no, no! let me
+entreat you not to," she said; "I do not so very much mind losing it."
+And in her eagerness to restrain him she unconsciously laid her gentle
+hand upon his arm, and took the force of motion out of him.
+
+"Indeed, I do not really care for the silly book," she continued,
+withdrawing her hand quickly, and reddening. "Pray, do not!"
+
+The young gentleman had kicked off his shoes. No sooner was the spell
+of contact broken than he jumped in. The water was still troubled and
+discoloured by his introductory adventure, and, though he ducked his
+head with the spirit of a dabchick, the book was missing. A scrap of
+paper floating from the bramble just above the water, and looking as if
+fire had caught its edges and it had flown from one adverse element to
+the other, was all he could lay hold of; and he returned to land
+disconsolately, to hear Miranda's murmured mixing of thanks and pretty
+expostulations.
+
+"Let me try again," he said.
+
+"No, indeed!" she replied, and used the awful threat: "I will run
+away if you do," which effectually restrained him.
+
+Her eye fell on the fire-stained scrap of paper, and brightened, as
+she cried, "There, there! you have what I want. It is that. I do not
+care for the book. No, please! You are not to look at it. Give it
+me."
+
+Before her playfully imperative injunction was fairly spoken,
+Richard had glanced at the document and discovered a Griffin between
+two Wheatsheaves: his crest in silver: and below--O wonderment
+immense! his own handwriting!
+
+He handed it to her. She took it, and put it in her bosom.
+
+Who would have thought, that, where all else perished, Odes, Idyls,
+Lines, Stanzas, this one Sonnet to the stars should be miraculously
+reserved for such a starry fate--passing beatitude!
+
+As they walked silently across the meadow, Richard strove to
+remember the hour and the mood of mind in which he had composed the
+notable production. The stars were invoked, as seeing and foreseeing
+all, to tell him where then his love reclined, and so forth; Hesper
+was complacent enough to do so, and described her in a couplet--
+
+    "Through sunset's amber see me shining fair,
+    As her blue eyes shine through her golden hair."
+
+And surely no words could be more prophetic. Here were two blue eyes
+and golden hair; and by some strange chance, that appeared like the
+working of a divine finger, she had become the possessor of the
+prophecy, she that was to fulfil it! The youth was too charged with
+emotion to speak. Doubtless the damsel had less to think of, or had
+some trifling burden on her conscience, for she seemed to grow
+embarrassed. At last she drew up her chin to look at her companion
+under the nodding brim of her hat (and the action gave her a
+charmingly freakish air), crying, "But where are you going to? You
+are wet through. Let me thank you again; and, pray, leave me, and go
+home and change instantly."
+
+"Wet?" replied the magnetic muser, with a voice of tender interest;
+"not more than one foot, I hope. I will leave you while you dry your
+stockings in the sun."
+
+At this she could not withhold a shy laugh.
+
+"Not I, but you. You would try to get that silly book for me, and
+you are dripping wet. Are you not very uncomfortable?"
+
+In all sincerity he assured her that he was not.
+
+"And you really do not feel that you are wet?"
+
+He really did not: and it was a fact that he spoke truth.
+
+She pursed her dewberry mouth in the most comical way, and her blue
+eyes lightened laughter out of the half-closed lids.
+
+"I cannot help it," she said, her mouth opening, and sounding
+harmonious bells of laughter in his ears. "Pardon me, won't you?"
+
+His face took the same soft smiling curves in admiration of her.
+
+"Not to feel that you have been in the water, the very moment
+after!" she musically interjected, seeing she was excused.
+
+"It's true," he said; and his own gravity then touched him to join a
+duet with her, which made them no longer feel strangers, and did the
+work of a month of intimacy. Better than sentiment, laughter opens
+the breast to love; opens the whole breast to his full quiver,
+instead of a corner here and there for a solitary arrow. Hail the
+occasion propitious, O British young! and laugh and treat love as an
+honest God, and dabble not with the sentimental rouge. These two
+laughed, and the souls of each cried out to the other, "It is I, it
+is I."
+
+They laughed and forgot the cause of their laughter, and the sun
+dried his light river clothing, and they strolled toward the
+blackbird's copse, and stood near a stile in sight of the foam of
+the weir and the many-coloured rings of eddies streaming forth from
+it.
+
+Richard's boat, meanwhile, had contrived to shoot the weir, and was
+swinging, bottom upward, broadside with the current down the rapid
+backwater.
+
+"Will you let it go?" said the damsel, eyeing it curiously.
+
+"It can't be stopped," he replied, and could have added: "What do I
+care for it now!"
+
+His old life was whirled away with it, dead, drowned. His new life
+was with her, alive, divine.
+
+She flapped low the brim of her hat. "You must really not come any
+farther," she softly said.
+
+"And will you go, and not tell me who you are?" he asked, growing
+bold as the fears of losing her came across him. "And will you not
+tell me before you go"--his face burned--"how you came by that--that
+paper?"
+
+She chose to select the easier question for answer: "You ought to
+know me; we have been introduced." Sweet was her winning off-hand
+affability.
+
+"Then who, in heaven's name, are you? Tell me! I never could have
+forgotten you."
+
+"You have, I think," she said.
+
+"Impossible that we could ever have met, and I forget you!"
+
+She looked up at him.
+
+"Do you remember Belthorpe?"
+
+"Belthorpe! Belthorpe!" quoth Richard, as if he had to touch his
+brain to recollect there was such a place. "Do you mean old Blaize's
+farm?"
+
+"Then I am old Blaize's niece." She tripped him a soft curtsey.
+
+The magnetized youth gazed at her. By what magic was it that this
+divine sweet creature could be allied with that old churl!
+
+"Then what--what is your name?" said his mouth, while his eyes
+added, "O wonderful creature! How came you to enrich the earth?"
+
+"Have you forgot the Desboroughs of Dorset, too?" she peered at him
+from a side-bend of the flapping brim.
+
+"The Desboroughs of Dorset?" A light broke in on him. "And have you
+grown to this? That little girl I saw there!"
+
+He drew close to her to read the nearest features of the vision. She
+could no more laugh off the piercing fervour of his eyes. Her
+volubility fluttered under his deeply wistful look, and now neither
+voice was high, and they were mutually constrained.
+
+"You see," she murmured, "we are old acquaintances."
+
+Richard, with his eyes still intently fixed on her, returned, "You
+are very beautiful!"
+
+The words slipped out. Perfect simplicity is unconsciously
+audacious. Her overpowering beauty struck his heart, and, like an
+instrument that is touched and answers to the touch, he spoke.
+
+Miss Desborough made an effort to trifle with this terrible
+directness; but his eyes would not be gainsaid, and checked her
+lips. She turned away from them, her bosom a little rebellious.
+Praise so passionately spoken, and by one who has been a damsel's
+first dream, dreamed of nightly many long nights, and clothed in the
+virgin silver of her thoughts in bud, praise from him is coin the
+heart cannot reject, if it would. She quickened her steps.
+
+"I have offended you!" said a mortally wounded voice across her
+shoulder.
+
+That he should think so were too dreadful.
+
+"Oh no, no! you would never offend me." She gave him her whole sweet
+face.
+
+"Then why--why do you leave me?"
+
+"Because," she hesitated, "I must go."
+
+"No. You must not go. Why must you go? Do not go."
+
+"Indeed I must," she said, pulling at the obnoxious broad brim of
+her hat; and, interpreting a pause he made for his assent to her
+rational resolve, shyly looking at him, she held her hand out, and
+said, "Good-bye," as if it were a natural thing to say.
+
+The hand was pure white--white and fragrant as the frosted blossom
+of a Maynight. It was the hand whose shadow, cast before, he had
+last night bent his head reverentially above, and kissed--resigning
+himself thereupon over to execution for payment of the penalty of
+such daring--by such bliss well rewarded.
+
+He took the hand, and held it, gazing between her eyes.
+
+"Good-bye," she said again, as frankly as she could, and at the same
+time slightly compressing her fingers on his in token of adieu. It
+was a signal for his to close firmly upon hers.
+
+"You will not go?"
+
+"Pray, let me," she pleaded, her sweet brows suing in wrinkles.
+
+"You will not go?" Mechanically he drew the white hand nearer his
+thumping heart.
+
+"I must," she faltered piteously.
+
+"You will not go?"
+
+"Oh yes! yes!"
+
+"Tell me. Do you wish to go?"
+
+The question was a subtle one. A moment or two she did not answer,
+and then forswore herself, and said, Yes.
+
+"Do you--you wish to go?" He looked with quivering eyelids under
+hers.
+
+A fainter Yes responded.
+
+"You wish--wish to leave me?" His breath went with the words.
+
+"Indeed I must."
+
+Her hand became a closer prisoner.
+
+All at once an alarming delicious shudder went through her frame.
+From him to her it coursed, and back from her to him. Forward and
+back love's electric messenger rushed from heart to heart, knocking
+at each, till it surged tumultuously against the bars of its
+prison, crying out for its mate. They stood trembling in unison, a
+lovely couple under these fair heavens of the morning.
+
+When he could get his voice it said, "Will you go?"
+
+But she had none to reply with, and could only mutely bend upward
+her gentle wrist.
+
+"Then, farewell!" he said, and, dropping his lips to the soft fair
+hand, kissed it, and hung his head, swinging away from her, ready
+for death.
+
+Strange, that now she was released she should linger by him.
+Strange, that his audacity, instead of the executioner, brought
+blushes and timid tenderness to his side, and the sweet words, "You
+are not angry with me?"
+
+"With you, O Beloved!" cried his soul. "And you forgive me, fair
+charity!"
+
+"I think it was rude of me to go without thanking you again," she
+said, and again proffered her hand.
+
+The sweet heaven-bird shivered out his song above him. The gracious
+glory of heaven fell upon his soul. He touched her hand, not moving
+his eyes from her, nor speaking, and she, with a soft word of
+farewell, passed across the stile, and up the pathway through the
+dewy shades of the copse, and out of the arch of the light, away
+from his eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And away with her went the wild enchantment. He looked on barren
+air. But it was no more the world of yesterday. The marvellous
+splendours had sown seeds in him, ready to spring up and bloom at
+her gaze; and in his bosom now the vivid conjuration of her tones,
+her face, her shape, makes them leap and illumine him like fitful
+summer lightnings--ghosts of the vanished sun.
+
+There was nothing to tell him that he had been making love and
+declaring it with extraordinary rapidity; nor did he know it. Soft
+flushed cheeks! sweet mouth! strange sweet brows! eyes of softest
+fire! how could his ripe eyes behold you, and not plead to keep you?
+Nay, how could he let you go? And he seriously asked himself that
+question.
+
+To-morrow this place will have a memory--the river and the meadow,
+and the white falling weir: his heart will build a temple here; and
+the skylark will be its high-priest, and the old blackbird its
+glossy-gowned chorister, and there will be a sacred repast of
+dewberries. To-day the grass is grass: his heart is chased by
+phantoms and finds rest nowhere. Only when the most tender freshness
+of his flower comes across him does he taste a moment's calm; and no
+sooner does it come than it gives place to keen pangs for fear that
+she may not be his for ever.
+
+Erelong he learns that her name is Lucy. Erelong he meets Ralph, and
+discovers that in a day he has distanced him by a sphere. He and
+Ralph and the curate of Lobourne join in their walks, and raise
+classical discussions on ladies' hair, fingering a thousand
+delicious locks, from those of Cleopatra to the Borgia's. "Fair!
+fair! all of them fair!" sighs the melancholy curate, "as are those
+women formed for our perdition! I think we have in this country what
+will match the Italian or the Greek." His mind flutters to Mrs.
+Doria, Richard blushes before the vision of Lucy, and Ralph, whose
+heroine's hair is a dark luxuriance, dissents, and claims a noble
+share in the slaughter of men for dark-haired Wonders. They have no
+mutual confidences, but they are singularly kind to each other,
+these three children of instinct.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+UNMASKING OF MASTER RIPTON THOMPSON
+
+
+Lady Blandish, and others who professed an interest in the fortunes
+and future of the systematized youth, had occasionally mentioned
+names of families whose alliance according to apparent calculations,
+would not degrade his blood: and over these names, secretly
+preserved on an open leaf of the note-book, Sir Austin, as he neared
+the metropolis, distantly dropped his eye. There were names historic
+and names mushroomic; names that the Conqueror might have called in
+his muster-roll; names that had been, clearly, tossed into the upper
+stratum of civilized life by a mill-wheel or a merchant-stool.
+Against them the baronet had written M., or Po. or Pr.--signifying,
+Money, Position, Principles, favouring the latter with special
+brackets. The wisdom of a worldly man, which he could now and then
+adopt, determined him, before he commenced his round of visits, to
+consult and sound his solicitor and his physician thereanent;
+lawyers and doctors being the rats who know best the merits of a
+house, and on what sort of foundation it may be standing.
+
+Sir Austin entered the great city with a sad mind. The memory of his
+misfortune came upon him vividly, as if no years had intervened, and
+it were but yesterday that he found the letter telling him that he
+had no wife and his son no mother. He wandered on foot through the
+streets the first night of his arrival, looking strangely at the
+shops and shows and bustle of the world from which he had divorced
+himself; feeling as destitute as the poorest vagrant. He had almost
+forgotten how to find his way about, and came across his old mansion
+in his efforts to regain his hotel. The windows were alight--signs
+of merry life within. He stared at it from the shadow of the
+opposite side. It seemed to him he was a ghost gazing upon his
+living past. And then the phantom which had stood there mocking
+while he felt as other men--the phantom, now flesh and blood
+reality, seized and convulsed his heart, and filled its unforgiving
+crevices with bitter ironic venom. He remembered by the time
+reflection returned to him that it was Algernon, who had the house
+at his disposal, probably giving a card-party, or something of the
+sort. In the morning, too, he remembered that he had divorced the
+world to wed a System, and must be faithful to that exacting Spouse,
+who, now alone of things on earth, could fortify and recompense him.
+
+Mr. Thompson received his client with the dignity and emotion due to
+such a rent-roll and the unexpectedness of the honour. He was a thin
+stately man of law, garbed as one who gave audience to sacred
+bishops, and carrying on his countenance the stamp of paternity to
+the parchment-skins, and of a virtuous attachment to Port wine
+sufficient to increase his respectability in the eyes of moral
+Britain. After congratulating Sir Austin on the fortunate issue of
+two or three suits, and being assured that the baronet's business in
+town had no concern therewith, Mr. Thompson ventured to hope that
+the young heir was all his father could desire him to be, and heard
+with satisfaction that he was a pattern to the youth of the Age.
+
+"A difficult time of life, Sir Austin!" said the old lawyer, shaking
+his head. "We must keep our eyes on them--keep awake! The mischief
+is done in a minute."
+
+"We must take care to have seen where we planted, and that the root
+was sound, or the mischief will do itself in spite of, or under the
+very spectacles of, supervision," said the baronet.
+
+His legal adviser murmured "Exactly," as if that were his own idea,
+adding, "It is my plan with Ripton, who has had the honour of an
+introduction to you, and a very pleasant time he spent with my young
+friend, whom he does not forget. Ripton follows the Law. He is
+articled to me, and will, I trust, succeed me worthily in your
+confidence. I bring him into town in the morning; I take him back at
+night. I think I may say that I am quite content with him."
+
+"Do you think," said Sir Austin, fixing his brows, "that you can
+trace every act of his to its motive?"
+
+The old lawyer bent forward and humbly requested that this might be
+repeated.
+
+"Do you"--Sir Austin held the same searching expression--"do you
+establish yourself in a radiating centre of intuition: do you base
+your watchfulness on so thorough an acquaintance with his character,
+so perfect a knowledge of the instrument, that all its movements--even
+the eccentric ones--are anticipated by you, and provided for?"
+
+The explanation was a little too long for the old lawyer to entreat
+another repetition. Winking with the painful deprecation of a deaf
+man, Mr. Thompson smiled urbanely, coughed conciliatingly, and said
+he was afraid he could not affirm that much, though he was happily
+enabled to say that Ripton had borne an extremely good character at
+school.
+
+"I find," Sir Austin remarked, as sardonically he relaxed his
+inspecting pose and mien, "there are fathers who are content to be
+simply obeyed. Now I require not only that my son should obey; I
+would have him guiltless of the impulse to gainsay my wishes--feeling
+me in him stronger than his undeveloped nature, up to a certain
+period, where my responsibility ends and his commences. Man is a
+self-acting machine. He cannot cease to be a machine; but, though
+self-acting, he may lose the powers of self-guidance, and in a wrong
+course his very vitalities hurry him to perdition. Young, he is an
+organism ripening to the set mechanic diurnal round, and while so he
+needs all the angels to hold watch over him that he grow straight  and
+healthy, and fit for what machinal duties he may have to perform." ...
+
+Mr. Thompson agitated his eyebrows dreadfully. He was utterly lost.
+He respected Sir Austin's estates too much to believe for a moment
+he was listening to downright folly. Yet how otherwise explain the
+fact of his excellent client being incomprehensible to him? For a
+middle-aged gentleman, and one who has been in the habit of advising
+and managing, will rarely have a notion of accusing his
+understanding; and Mr. Thompson had not the slightest notion of
+accusing his. But the baronet's condescension in coming thus to him,
+and speaking on the subject nearest his heart, might well affect
+him, and he quickly settled the case in favour of both parties,
+pronouncing mentally that his honoured client had a meaning, and so
+deep it was, so subtle, that no wonder he experienced difficulty in
+giving it fitly significant words.
+
+Sir Austin elaborated his theory of the Organism and the Mechanism,
+for his lawyer's edification. At a recurrence of the world "healthy"
+Mr. Thompson caught him up--
+
+"I apprehended you! Oh, I agree with you, Sir Austin! entirely!
+Allow me to ring for my son Ripton. I think, if you condescend to
+examine him, you will say that regular habits, and a diet of nothing
+but law-reading--for other forms of literature I strictly
+interdict--have made him all that you instance."
+
+Mr. Thompson's hand was on the bell. Sir Austin arrested him.
+
+"Permit me to see the lad at his occupation," said he.
+
+Our old friend Ripton sat in a room apart with the confidential
+clerk, Mr. Beazley, a veteran of law, now little better than a
+document, looking already signed and sealed, and shortly to be
+delivered, who enjoined nothing from his pupil and companion save
+absolute silence, and sounded his praises to his father at the close
+of days when it had been rigidly observed--not caring, or
+considering, the finished dry old document that he was, under what
+kind of spell a turbulent commonplace youth could be charmed into
+stillness for six hours of the day. Ripton was supposed to be
+devoted to the study of Blackstone. A tome of the classic legal
+commentator lay extended outside his desk, under the partially
+lifted lid of which nestled the assiduous student's head--law being
+thus brought into direct contact with his brainpan. The office-door
+opened, and he heard not; his name was called, and he remained
+equally moveless. His method of taking in Blackstone seemed
+absorbing as it was novel.
+
+"Comparing notes, I daresay," whispered Mr. Thompson to Sir Austin.
+"I call that study!"
+
+The confidential clerk rose, and bowed obsequious senility.
+
+"Is it like this every day, Beazley?" Mr. Thompson asked with
+parental pride.
+
+"Ahem!" the old clerk replied, "he is like this every day, sir. I
+could not ask more of a mouse."
+
+Sir Austin stepped forward to the desk. His proximity roused one of
+Ripton's senses, which blew a call to the others. Down went the lid
+of the desk. Dismay, and the ardours of study, flashed together in
+Ripton's face. He slouched from his perch with the air of one who
+means rather to defend his position than welcome a superior, the
+right hand in his waistcoat pocket fumbling a key, the left catching
+at his vacant stool.
+
+Sir Austin put two fingers on the youth's shoulder, and said,
+leaning his head a little on one side, in a way habitual to him, "I
+am glad to find my son's old comrade thus profitably occupied. I
+know what study is myself. But beware of prosecuting it too
+excitedly! Come! you must not be offended at our interruption; you
+will soon take up the thread again. Besides, you know, you must get
+accustomed to the visits of your client."
+
+So condescending and kindly did this speech sound to Mr. Thompson,
+that, seeing Ripton still preserve his appearance of disorder and
+sneaking defiance, he thought fit to nod and frown at the youth, and
+desired him to inform the baronet what particular part of Blackstone
+he was absorbed in mastering at that moment.
+
+Ripton hesitated an instant, and blundered out, with dubious
+articulation, "The Law of Gravelkind."
+
+"What Law?" said Sir Austin, perplexed.
+
+"Gravelkind," again rumbled Ripton's voice.
+
+Sir Austin turned to Mr. Thompson for an explanation. The old lawyer
+was shaking his law-box.
+
+"Singular!" he exclaimed. "He will make that mistake! What law,
+sir?"
+
+Ripton read his error in the sternly painful expression of his
+father's face, and corrected himself. "Gavelkind, sir."
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Thompson, with a sigh of relief. "Gravelkind, indeed!
+Gavelkind! An old Kentish"----He was going to expound, but Sir
+Austin assured him he knew it, and a very absurd law it was, adding,
+"I should like to look at your son's notes, or remarks on the
+judiciousness of that family arrangement, if he has any."
+
+"You were making notes, or referring to them, as we entered," said
+Mr. Thompson to the sucking lawyer; "a very good plan, which I have
+always enjoined on you. Were you not?"
+
+Ripton stammered that he was afraid he had not any notes to show,
+worth seeing.
+
+"What were you doing then, sir?"
+
+"Making notes," muttered Ripton, looking incarnate subterfuge.
+
+"Exhibit!"
+
+Ripton glanced at his desk and then at his father; at Sir Austin,
+and at the confidential clerk. He took out his key. It would not fit
+the hole.
+
+"Exhibit!" was peremptorily called again.
+
+In his praiseworthy efforts to accommodate the keyhole, Ripton
+discovered that the desk was already unlocked. Mr. Thompson marched
+to it, and held the lid aloft. A book was lying open within, which
+Ripton immediately hustled among a mass of papers and tossed into a
+dark corner, not before the glimpse of a coloured frontispiece was
+caught by Sir Austin's eye.
+
+The baronet smiled, and said, "You study Heraldry, too? Are you fond
+of the science?"
+
+Ripton replied that he was very fond of it--extremely attached, and
+threw a further pile of papers into the dark corner.
+
+The notes had been less conspicuously placed, and the search for
+them was tedious and vain. Papers, not legal, or the fruits of
+study, were found, that made Mr. Thompson more intimate with the
+condition of his son's exchequer; nothing in the shape of a remark
+on the Law of Gavelkind.
+
+Mr. Thompson suggested to his son that they might be among those
+scraps he had thrown carelessly into the dark corner. Ripton, though
+he consented to inspect them, was positive they were not there.
+
+"What have we here?" said Mr. Thompson, seizing a neatly folded
+paper addressed to the Editor of a law publication, as Ripton
+brought them forth, one by one. Forthwith Mr. Thompson fixed his
+spectacles and read aloud:
+
+     "_To the Editor of the 'Jurist.'_
+
+     "Sir,--In your recent observations on the great case of Crim"----
+
+Mr. Thompson hem'd! and stopped short, like a man who comes
+unexpectedly upon a snake in his path. Mr. Beazley's feet shuffled.
+Sir Austin changed the position of an arm.
+
+"It's on the other side, I think," gasped Ripton.
+
+Mr. Thompson confidently turned over, and intoned with emphasis.
+
+     "To Absalom, the son of David, the little Jew usurer of Bond
+     Court, Whitecross Gutters, for his introduction to Venus, I O U
+     Five pounds, when I can pay.
+
+                                          "Signed: RIPTON THOMPSON."
+
+Underneath this fictitious legal instrument was discreetly appended:
+
+     "(Mem. Document not binding.)"
+
+There was a pause: an awful under-breath of sanctified wonderment
+and reproach passed round the office. Sir Austin assumed an
+attitude. Mr. Thompson shed a glance of severity on his confidential
+clerk, who parried by throwing up his hands.
+
+Ripton, now fairly bewildered, stuffed another paper under his
+father's nose, hoping the outside perhaps would satisfy him: it was
+marked "Legal Considerations." Mr. Thompson had no idea of sparing
+or shielding his son. In fact, like many men whose self-love is
+wounded by their offspring, he felt vindictive, and was ready to
+sacrifice him up to a certain point, for the good of both. He
+therefore opened the paper, expecting something worse than what he
+had hitherto seen, despite its formal heading, and he was not
+disappointed.
+
+The "Legal Considerations" related to the Case regarding which
+Ripton had conceived it imperative upon him to address a letter to
+the Editor of the "Jurist," and was indeed a great case, and an
+ancient; revived apparently for the special purpose of displaying
+the forensic abilities of the Junior Counsel for the Plaintiff, Mr.
+Ripton Thompson, whose assistance the Attorney-General, in his
+opening statement, congratulated himself on securing, a rather
+unusual thing, due probably to the eminence and renown of that
+youthful gentleman at the Bar of his country. So much was seen from
+the copy of a report purporting to be extracted from a newspaper,
+and prefixed to the Junior Counsel's remarks, or Legal Considerations,
+on the conduct of the Case, the admissibility and non-admissibility
+of certain evidence, and the ultimate decision of the judges.
+
+Mr. Thompson, senior, lifted the paper high, with the spirit of one
+prepared to do execution on the criminal, and in the voice of a
+town-crier, varied by a bitter accentuation and satiric sing-song
+tone, deliberately read:
+
+     "Vulcan _v._ Mars.
+
+     "The Attorney-General, assisted by Mr. Ripton Thompson,
+     appeared on behalf of the Plaintiff. Mr. Serjeant Cupid, Q.C.,
+     and Mr. Capital Opportunity, for the Defendant."
+
+"Oh!" snapped Mr. Thompson, senior, peering venom at the unfortunate
+Ripton over his spectacles, "your notes are on that issue, sir! Thus you
+employ your time, sir!"
+
+With another side-shot at the confidential clerk, who retired
+immediately behind a strong entrenchment of shrugs, Mr. Thompson
+was pushed by the devil of his rancour to continue reading:
+
+     "This Case is too well known to require more than a partial
+     summary of particulars"....
+
+"Ahem! we will skip the particulars, however partial," said Mr.
+Thompson. "Ah!--what do you mean here, sir,--but enough! I think we
+may be excused your Legal Considerations on such a Case. This is how
+you employ your law-studies, sir! You put them to this purpose? Mr.
+Beazley! you will henceforward sit alone. I must have this young man
+under my own eye. Sir Austin! permit me to apologize to you for
+subjecting you to a scene so disagreeable. It was a father's duty
+not to spare him."
+
+Mr. Thompson wiped his forehead, as Brutus might have done after
+passing judgment on the scion of his house.
+
+"These papers," he went on, fluttering Ripton's precious
+lucubrations in a waving judicial hand, "I shall retain. The day
+will come when he will regard them with shame. And it shall be his
+penance, his punishment, to do so! Stop!" he cried, as Ripton was
+noiselessly shutting his desk, "have you more of them, sir; of a
+similar description? Rout them out! Let us know you at your worst.
+What have you there--in that corner?"
+
+Ripton was understood to say he devoted that corner to old briefs on
+important cases.
+
+Mr. Thompson thrust his trembling fingers among the old briefs, and
+turned over the volume Sir Austin had observed, but without much
+remarking it, for his suspicions had not risen to print.
+
+"A Manual of Heraldry?" the baronet politely, and it may be
+ironically, inquired, before it could well escape.
+
+"I like it very much," said Ripton, clutching the book in dreadful
+torment.
+
+"Allow me to see that you have our arms and crest correct." The
+baronet proffered a hand for the book.
+
+"A Griffin between two Wheatsheaves," cried Ripton, still clutching
+it nervously.
+
+Mr. Thompson, without any notion of what he was doing, drew the book
+from Ripton's hold; whereupon the two seniors laid their grey heads
+together over the title-page. It set forth in attractive characters
+beside a coloured frontispiece, which embodied the promise displayed
+there, the entrancing adventures of Miss Random, a strange young
+lady.
+
+Had there been a Black Hole within the area of those law regions to
+consign Ripton to there and then, or an Iron Rod handy to mortify
+his sinful flesh, Mr. Thompson would have used them. As it was, he
+contented himself by looking Black Holes and Iron Rods at the
+detected youth, who sat on his perch insensible to what might happen
+next, collapsed.
+
+Mr. Thompson cast the wicked creature down with a "Pah!" He,
+however, took her up again, and strode away with her. Sir Austin
+gave Ripton a forefinger, and kindly touched his head, saying,
+"Good-bye, boy! At some future date Richard will be happy to see you
+at Raynham."
+
+Undoubtedly this was a great triumph to the System!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+GOOD WINE AND GOOD BLOOD
+
+
+The conversation between solicitor and client was resumed.
+
+"Is it possible," quoth Mr. Thompson, the moment he had ushered his
+client into his private room, "that you will consent, Sir Austin, to
+see him and receive him again?"
+
+"Certainly," the baronet replied. "Why not? This by no means
+astonishes me. When there is no longer danger to my son he will be
+welcome as he was before. He is a schoolboy. I knew it. I expected
+it. The results of your principle, Thompson!"
+
+"One of the very worst books of that abominable class!" exclaimed
+the old lawyer, opening at the coloured frontispiece, from which
+brazen Miss Random smiled bewitchingly out, as if she had no doubt
+of captivating Time and all his veterans on a fair field. "Pah!" he
+shut her to with the energy he would have given to the office of
+publicly slapping her face; "from this day I diet him on bread and
+water--rescind his pocket-money!--How he could have got hold of such
+a book! How he--! And what ideas! Concealing them from me as he has
+done so cunningly! He trifles with vice! His mind is in a putrid
+state! I might have believed--I did believe--I might have gone on
+believing--my son Ripton to be a moral young man!" The old lawyer
+interjected on the delusion of fathers, and sat down in a lamentable
+abstraction.
+
+"The lad has come out!" said Sir Austin. "His adoption of the legal
+form is amusing. He trifles with vice, true: people newly initiated
+are as hardy as its intimates, and a young sinner's amusements will
+resemble those of a confirmed debauchee. The satiated, and the
+insatiate, appetite alike appeal to extremes. You are astonished at
+this revelation of your son's condition. I expected it; though
+assuredly, believe me, not this sudden and indisputable proof of it.
+But I knew that the seed was in him, and therefore I have not
+latterly invited him to Raynham. School, and the corruption there,
+will bear its fruits sooner or later. I could advise you, Thompson,
+what to do with him: it would be my plan."
+
+Mr. Thompson murmured, like a true courtier, that he should esteem
+it an honour to be favoured with Sir Austin Feverel's advice:
+secretly resolute, like a true Briton, to follow his own.
+
+"Let him, then," continued the baronet, "see vice in its nakedness.
+While he has yet some innocence, nauseate him! Vice, taken little by
+little, usurps gradually the whole creature. My counsel to you,
+Thompson, would be, to drag him through the sinks of town."
+
+Mr. Thompson began to blink again.
+
+"Oh, I shall punish him, Sir Austin! Do not fear me, sir. I have no
+tenderness for vice."
+
+"That is not what is wanted, Thompson. You mistake me. He should be
+dealt with gently. Heavens! do you hope to make him hate vice by
+making him a martyr for its sake? You must descend from the pedestal
+of age to become his Mentor: cause him to see how certainly and
+pitilessly vice itself punishes: accompany him into its haunts"----
+
+"Over town?" broke forth Mr. Thompson.
+
+"Over town," said the baronet.
+
+"And depend upon it," he added, "that, until fathers act thoroughly
+up to their duty, we shall see the sights we see in great cities,
+and hear the tales we hear in little villages, with death and
+calamity in our homes, and a legacy of sorrow and shame to the
+generations to come. I do aver," he exclaimed, becoming excited,
+"that, if it were not for the duty to my son, and the hope I cherish
+in him, I, seeing the accumulation of misery we are handing down to
+an innocent posterity--to whom, through our sin, the fresh breath of
+life will be foul--I--yes! I would hide my name! For whither are we
+tending? What home is pure absolutely? What cannot our doctors and
+lawyers tell us?"
+
+Mr. Thompson acquiesced significantly.
+
+"And what is to come of this?" Sir Austin continued. "When the sins
+of the fathers are multiplied by the sons, is not perdition the
+final sum of things? And is not life, the boon of heaven, growing to
+be the devil's game utterly? But for my son, I would hide my name. I
+would not bequeath it to be cursed by them that walk above my
+grave!"
+
+This was indeed a terrible view of existence. Mr. Thompson felt
+uneasy. There was a dignity in his client, an impressiveness in his
+speech, that silenced remonstrating reason and the cry of long years
+of comfortable respectability. Mr. Thompson went to church
+regularly; paid his rates and dues without overmuch, or at least
+more than common, grumbling. On the surface he was a good citizen,
+fond of his children, faithful to his wife, devoutly marching to a
+fair seat in heaven on a path paved by something better than a
+thousand a year. But here was a man sighting him from below the
+surface, and though it was an unfair, unaccustomed, not to say
+un-English, method of regarding one's fellow-man, Mr. Thompson was
+troubled by it. What though his client exaggerated? Facts were at
+the bottom of what he said. And he was acute--he had unmasked
+Ripton! Since Ripton's exposure he winced at a personal application
+in the text his client preached from. Possibly this was the secret
+source of part of his anger against that peccant youth.
+
+Mr. Thompson shook his head, and, with dolefully puckered visage and
+a pitiable contraction of his shoulders, rose slowly up from his
+chair. Apparently he was about to speak, but he straightway turned
+and went meditatively to a side-recess in the room, whereof he
+opened a door, drew forth a tray and a decanter labelled PORT,
+filled a glass for his client, deferentially invited him to partake
+of it; filled another glass for himself, and drank.
+
+That was his reply.
+
+Sir Austin never took wine before dinner. Thompson had looked as if
+he meant to speak: he waited for Thompson's words.
+
+Mr. Thompson saw that, as his client did not join him in his glass,
+the eloquence of that Porty reply was lost on his client.
+
+Having slowly ingurgitated and meditated upon this precious draught,
+and turned its flavour over and over with an aspect of potent
+Judicial wisdom (one might have thought that he was weighing mankind
+in the balance), the old lawyer heaved, and said, sharpening his
+lips over the admirable vintage, "The world is in a very sad state,
+I fear, Sir Austin!"
+
+His client gazed at him queerly.
+
+"But that," Mr. Thompson added immediately, ill-concealing by his
+gaze the glowing intestinal congratulations going on within him,
+"that is, I think you would say, Sir Austin--if I could but prevail
+upon you--a tolerably good character wine!"
+
+"There's virtue somewhere, I see, Thompson!" Sir Austin murmured,
+without disturbing his legal adviser's dimples.
+
+The old lawyer sat down to finish his glass, saying, that such a
+wine was not to be had everywhere.
+
+They were then outwardly silent for a space. Inwardly one of them
+was full of riot and jubilant uproar: as if the solemn fields of law
+were suddenly to be invaded and possessed by troops of Bacchanals:
+and to preserve a decently wretched physiognomy over it, and keep on
+terms with his companion, he had to grimace like a melancholy clown
+in a pantomime.
+
+Mr. Thompson brushed back his hair. The baronet was still expectant.
+Mr. Thompson sighed deeply, and emptied his glass. He combated the
+change that had come over him. He tried not to see Ruby. He tried to
+feel miserable, and it was not in him. He spoke, drawing what
+appropriate inspirations he could from his client's countenance, to
+show that they had views in common: "Degenerating sadly, I fear!"
+
+The baronet nodded.
+
+"According to what my wine-merchants say," continued Mr. Thompson,
+"there can be no doubt about it."
+
+Sir Austin stared.
+
+"It's the grape, or the ground, or something," Mr. Thompson went on.
+"All I can say is, our youngsters will have a bad look-out! In my
+opinion Government should be compelled to send out a Commission to
+inquire into the cause. To Englishmen it would be a public calamity.
+It surprises me--I hear men sit and talk despondently of this
+extraordinary disease of the vine, and not one of them seems to
+think it incumbent on him to act, and do his best to stop it." He
+fronted his client like a man who accuses an enormous public
+delinquency. "Nobody makes a stir! The apathy of Englishmen will
+become proverbial. Pray, try it, Sir Austin! Pray, allow me. Such a
+wine cannot disagree at any hour. Do! I am allowanced two glasses
+three hours before dinner. Stomachic. I find it agrees with me
+surprisingly: quite a new man. I suppose it will last our time. It
+must! What should we do? There's no Law possible without it. Not a
+lawyer of us could live. Ours is an occupation which dries the
+blood."
+
+The scene with Ripton had unnerved him, the wine had renovated, and
+gratitude to the wine inspired his tongue. He thought that his
+client, of the whimsical mind, though undoubtedly correct moral
+views, had need of a glass.
+
+"Now that very wine--Sir Austin--I think I do not err in saying,
+that very wine your respected father, Sir Pylcher Feverel, used to
+taste whenever he came to consult my father, when I was a boy. And I
+remember one day being called in, and Sir Pylcher himself poured me
+out a glass. I wish I could call in Ripton now, and do the same. No!
+Leniency in such a case as that!--The wine would not hurt him--I
+doubt if there be much left for him to welcome his guests with. Ha!
+ha! Now if I could persuade you, Sir Austin, as you do not take wine
+before dinner, some day to favour me with your company at my little
+country cottage--I have a wine there--the fellow to that--I think
+you would, I do think you would"--Mr. Thompson meant to say, he
+thought his client would arrive at something of a similar jocund
+contemplation of his fellows in their degeneracy that inspirited
+lawyers after potation, but condensed the sensual promise into
+"highly approve."
+
+Sir Austin speculated on his legal adviser with a sour mouth
+comically compressed.
+
+It stood clear to him that Thompson before his Port, and Thompson
+after, were two different men. To indoctrinate him now was too late:
+it was perhaps the time to make the positive use of him he wanted.
+
+He pencilled on a handy slip of paper: "Two prongs of a fork; the
+World stuck between them--Port and the Palate: 'Tis one which fails
+first--Down goes World;" and again the hieroglyph--"Port-spectacles."
+He said, "I shall gladly accompany you this evening, Thompson,"
+words that transfigured the delighted lawyer, and ensigned the
+skeleton of a great Aphorism to his pocket, there to gather flesh
+and form, with numberless others in a like condition.
+
+"I came to visit my lawyer," he said to himself. "I think I have
+been dealing with The World in epitome!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE SYSTEM ENCOUNTERS THE WILD OATS
+SPECIAL PLEA
+
+
+The rumour circulated that Sir Austin Feverel, the recluse of
+Raynham, the rank misogynist, the rich baronet, was in town, looking
+out a bride for his only son and uncorrupted heir. Doctor Benjamin
+Bairam was the excellent authority. Doctor Bairam had safely
+delivered Mrs. Deborah Gossip of this interesting bantling, which
+was forthwith dandled in dozens of feminine laps. Doctor Bairam
+could boast the first interview with the famous recluse. He had it
+from his own lips that the object of the baronet was to look out a
+bride for his only son and uncorrupted heir; "and," added the
+doctor, "she'll be lucky who gets him." Which was interpreted to
+mean, that he would be a catch; the doctor probably intending to
+allude to certain extraordinary difficulties in the way of a choice.
+
+A demand was made on the publisher of THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP for all
+his outstanding copies. Conventionalities were defied. A
+summer-shower of cards fell on the baronet's table.
+
+He had few male friends. He shunned the Clubs as nests of scandal.
+The cards he contemplated were mostly those of the sex, with the
+husband, if there was a husband, evidently dragged in for
+propriety's sake. He perused the cards and smiled. He knew their
+purpose. What terrible light Thompson, and Bairam had thrown on some
+of them! Heavens! in what a state was the blood of this Empire.
+
+Before commencing his campaign he called on two ancient intimates,
+Lord Heddon, and his distant cousin Darley Absworthy, both Members
+of Parliament, useful men, though gouty, who had sown in their time
+a fine crop of wild oats, and advocated the advantage of doing so,
+seeing that they did not fancy themselves the worse for it. He found
+one with an imbecile son and the other with consumptive daughters.
+"So much," he wrote in the Note-book, "for the Wild Oats theory!"
+
+Darley was proud of his daughters' white and pink skins. "Beautiful
+complexions," he called them. The eldest was in the market,
+immensely admired. Sir Austin Was introduced to her. She talked
+fluently and sweetly. A youth not on his guard, a simple schoolboy
+youth, or even a man, might have fallen in love with her, she was so
+affable and fair. There was something poetic about her. And she was
+quite well, she said, the baronet frequently questioning her on that
+point. She intimated that she was robust; but towards the close of
+their conversation her hand would now and then travel to her side,
+and she breathed painfully an instant, saying, "Isn't it odd? Dora,
+Adela, and myself, we all feel the same queer sensation--about the
+heart, I think it is--after talking much."
+
+Sir Austin nodded and blinked sadly, exclaiming to his soul, "Wild
+oats! wild oats!"
+
+He did not ask permission to see Dora and Adela.
+
+Lord Heddon vehemently preached wild oats.
+
+"It's all nonsense, Feverel," he said, "about bringing up a lad out
+of the common way. He's all the better for a little racketing when
+he's green--feels his bone and muscle--learns to know the world.
+He'll never be a man if he hasn't played at the old game one time in
+his life, and the earlier the better. I've always found the best
+fellows were wildish once. I don't care what he does when he's a
+greenhorn; besides, he's got an excuse for it then. You can't expect
+to have a man, if he doesn't take a man's food. You'll have a
+milksop. And, depend upon it, when he does break out he'll go to the
+devil, and nobody pities him. Look what those fellows, the grocers,
+do when they get hold of a young--what d'ye call 'em?--apprentice.
+They know the scoundrel was born with a sweet tooth. Well! they give
+him the run of the shop, and in a very short time he soberly deals
+out the goods, a devilish deal too wise to abstract a morsel even
+for the pleasure of stealing. I know you have contrary theories. You
+hold that the young grocer should have a soul above sugar. It won't
+do! Take my word for it, Feverel, it's a dangerous experiment, that
+of bringing up flesh and blood in harness. No colt will bear it, or
+he's a tame beast. And look you: take it on medical grounds. Early
+excesses the frame will recover from: late ones break the
+constitution. There's the case in a nutshell. How's your son?"
+
+"Sound and well!" replied Sir Austin. "And yours?"
+
+"Oh, Lipscombe's always the same!" Lord Heddon sighed peevishly.
+"He's quiet--that's one good thing; but there's no getting the
+country to take him, so I must give up hopes of that."
+
+Lord Lipscombe entering the room just then, Sir Austin surveyed him,
+and was not astonished at the refusal of the country to take him.
+
+"Wild oats!" he thought, as he contemplated the headless,
+degenerate, weedy issue and result.
+
+Both Darley Absworthy and Lord Heddon spoke of the marriage of their
+offspring as a matter of course. "And if I were not a coward," Sir
+Austin confessed to himself, "I should stand forth and forbid the
+banns! This universal ignorance of the inevitable consequence of
+sin is frightful! The wild oats plea is a torpedo that seems to have
+struck the world, and rendered it morally insensible." However, they
+silenced him. He was obliged to spare their feelings on a subject to
+him so deeply sacred. The healthful image of his noble boy rose
+before him, a triumphant living rejoinder to any hostile argument.
+
+He was content to remark to his doctor, that he thought the third
+generation of wild oats would be a pretty thin crop!
+
+Families against whom neither Thompson lawyer nor Bairam physician
+could recollect a progenitorial blot, either on the male or female
+side, were not numerous. "Only," said the doctor, "you really must
+not be too exacting in these days, my dear Sir Austin. It is
+impossible to contest your principle, and you are doing mankind
+incalculable service in calling its attention to this the gravest of
+its duties: but as the stream of civilization progresses we must be
+a little taken in the lump, as it were. The world is, I can assure
+you--and I do not look only above the surface, you can believe--the
+world is awakening to the vital importance of the question."
+
+"Doctor," replied Sir Austin, "if you had a pure-blood Arab barb
+would you cross him with a screw?"
+
+"Decidedly not," said the doctor.
+
+"Then permit me to say, I shall employ every care to match my son
+according to his merits," Sir Austin returned. "I trust the world is
+awakening, as you observe. I have been to my publisher, since my
+arrival in town, with a manuscript 'Proposal for a New System of
+Education of our British Youth,' which may come in opportunely. I
+think I am entitled to speak on that subject."
+
+"Certainly," said the doctor. "You will admit, Sir Austin, that,
+compared with continental nations--our neighbours, for instance--we
+shine to advantage, in morals, as in everything else. I hope you
+admit that?"
+
+"I find no consolation in shining by comparison with a lower
+standard," said the baronet. "If I compare the enlightenment of your
+views--for you admit my principle--with the obstinate incredulity of
+a country doctor's, who sees nothing of the world, you are hardly
+flattered, I presume?"
+
+Doctor Bairam would hardly be flattered at such a comparison,
+assuredly, he interjected.
+
+"Besides," added the baronet, "the French make no pretences, and
+thereby escape one of the main penalties of hypocrisy. Whereas
+we!--but I am not their advocate, credit me. It is better, perhaps,
+to pay our homage to virtue. At least it delays the spread of entire
+corruptness."
+
+Doctor Bairam wished the baronet success, and diligently endeavoured
+to assist his search for a mate worthy of the pure-blood barb, by
+putting several mamas, whom he visited, on the alert.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+A DIVERSION PLAYED ON A PENNY-WHISTLE
+
+
+Away with Systems! Away with a corrupt World! Let us breathe the air
+of the Enchanted Island.
+
+Golden lie the meadows: golden run the streams; red gold is on the
+pine-stems. The sun is coming down to earth, and walks the fields
+and the waters.
+
+The sun is coming down to earth, and the fields and the waters shout
+to him golden shouts. He comes, and his heralds run before him, and
+touch the leaves of oaks and planes and beeches lucid green, and the
+pine-stems redder gold; leaving brightest footprints upon
+thickly-weeded banks, where the foxglove's last upper-bells incline,
+and bramble-shoots wander amid moist rich herbage. The plumes of the
+woodland are alight; and beyond them, over the open, 'tis a race
+with the long-thrown shadows; a race across the heaths and up the
+hills, till, at the farthest bourne of mounted eastern cloud, the
+heralds of the sun lay rosy fingers and rest.
+
+Sweet are the shy recesses of the woodland. The ray treads softly
+there. A film athwart the pathway quivers many-hued against purple
+shade fragrant with warm pines, deep moss-beds, feathery ferns. The
+little brown squirrel drops tail, and leaps; the inmost bird is
+startled to a chance tuneless note. From silence into silence things
+move.
+
+Peeps of the revelling splendour above and around enliven the
+conscious full heart within. The flaming West, the crimson heights,
+shower their glories through voluminous leafage. But these are
+bowers where deep bliss dwells, imperial joy, that owes no fealty to
+yonder glories, in which the young lamb gambols and the spirits of
+men are glad. Descend, great Radiance! embrace creation with
+beneficent fire, and pass from us! You and the vice-regal light that
+succeeds to you, and all heavenly pageants, are the ministers and
+the slaves of the throbbing content within.
+
+For this is the home of the enchantment. Here, secluded from vexed
+shores, the prince and princess of the island meet: here like
+darkling nightingales they sit, and into eyes and ears and hands
+pour endless ever-fresh treasures of their souls.
+
+Roll on, grinding wheels of the world: cries of ships going down in
+a calm, groans of a System which will not know its rightful hour of
+exultation, complain to the universe. You are not heard here.
+
+He calls her by her name, Lucy: and she, blushing at her great
+boldness, has called him by his, Richard. Those two names are the
+key-notes of the wonderful harmonies the angels sing aloft.
+
+"Lucy! my beloved!"
+
+"O Richard!"
+
+Out in the world there, on the skirts of the woodland, a sheep-boy
+pipes to meditative eye on a penny-whistle.
+
+Love's musical instrument is as old, and as poor: it has but two
+stops; and yet, you see, the cunning musician does thus much with
+it!
+
+Other speech they have little; light foam playing upon waves of
+feeling, and of feeling compact, that bursts only when the sweeping
+volume is too wild, and is no more than their sigh of tenderness
+spoken.
+
+Perhaps love played his tune so well because their natures had
+unblunted edges, and were keen for bliss, confiding in it as natural
+food. To gentlemen and ladies he fine-draws upon the viol,
+ravishingly; or blows into the mellow bassoon; or rouses the heroic
+ardours of the trumpet; or, it may be, commands the whole Orchestra
+for them. And they are pleased. He is still the cunning musician.
+They languish, and taste ecstasy: but it is, however sonorous, an
+earthly concert. For them the spheres move not to two notes. They
+have lost, or forfeited and never known, the first supersensual
+spring of the ripe senses into passion; when they carry the soul
+with them, and have the privileges of spirits to walk disembodied,
+boundlessly to feel. Or one has it, and the other is a dead body.
+Ambrosia let them eat, and drink the nectar: here sit a couple to
+whom Love's simple bread and water is a finer feast.
+
+Pipe, happy sheep-boy, Love! Irradiated angels, unfold your wings
+and lift your voices!
+
+They have outflown philosophy. Their instinct has shot beyond the
+ken of science. They were made for their Eden.
+
+"And this divine gift was in store for me!"
+
+So runs the internal outcry of each, clasping each: it is their
+recurring refrain to the harmonies. How it illumined the years gone
+by and suffused the living Future!
+
+"You for me: I for you!"
+
+"We are born for each other!"
+
+They believe that the angels have been busy about them from their
+cradles. The celestial hosts have worthily striven to bring them
+together. And, O Victory! O wonder! after toil and pain, and
+difficulties exceeding, the celestial hosts have succeeded!
+
+"Here we two sit who are written above as one!"
+
+Pipe, happy Love! pipe on to these dear innocents!
+
+The tide of colour has ebbed from the upper sky. In the West the sea
+of sunken fire draws back; and the stars leap forth, and tremble,
+and retire before the advancing moon, who slips the silver train of
+cloud from her shoulders, and, with her foot upon the pine-tops,
+surveys heaven.
+
+"Lucy, did you never dream of meeting me?"
+
+"O Richard! yes; for I remembered you."
+
+"Lucy! and did you pray that we might meet?"
+
+"I did!"
+
+Young as when she looked upon the lovers in Paradise, the fair
+Immortal journeys onward. Fronting her, it is not night but veiled
+day. Full half the sky is flushed. Not darkness, not day, but the
+nuptials of the two.
+
+"My own! my own for ever! You are pledged to me? Whisper!"
+
+He hears the delicious music.
+
+"And you are mine?"
+
+A soft beam travels to the fern-covert under the pine-wood where
+they sit, and for answer he has her eyes: turned to him an instant,
+timidly fluttering over the depths of his, and then downcast; for
+through her eyes her soul is naked to him.
+
+"Lucy! my bride! my life!"
+
+The night-jar spins his dark monotony on the branch of the pine. The
+soft beam travels round them, and listens to their hearts. Their
+lips are locked.
+
+Pipe no more, Love, for a time! Pipe as you will you cannot express
+their first kiss; nothing of its sweetness, and of the sacredness of
+it nothing. St. Cecilia up aloft, before the silver organ-pipes of
+Paradise, pressing fingers upon all the notes of which Love is but
+one, from her you may hear it.
+
+So Love is silent. Out in the world there, on the skirts of the
+woodland, the self-satisfied sheep-boy delivers a last complacent
+squint down the length of his penny-whistle, and, with a flourish
+correspondingly awry, he also marches into silence, hailed by
+supper. The woods are still. There is heard but the night-jar
+spinning on the pine-branch, circled by moonlight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+CELEBRATES THE TIME-HONOURED TREATMENT OF A DRAGON BY THE HERO
+
+
+Enchanted Islands have not yet rooted out their old brood of
+dragons. Wherever there is romance, these monsters come by inimical
+attraction. Because the heavens are certainly propitious to true
+lovers, the beasts of the abysses are banded to destroy them,
+stimulated by innumerable sad victories; and every love-tale is an
+Epic War of the upper and lower powers. I wish good fairies were a
+little more active. They seem to be cajoled into security by the
+happiness of their favourites; whereas the wicked are always alert,
+and circumspect. They let the little ones shut their eyes to fancy
+they are not seen, and then commence.
+
+These appointments and meetings, involving a start from the
+dinner-table at the hour of contemplative digestion and prime
+claret; the hour when the wise youth Adrian delighted to talk at his
+ease--to recline in dreamy consciousness that a work of good was
+going on inside him; these abstractions from his studies, excesses
+of gaiety, and glumness, heavings of the chest, and other odd signs,
+but mainly the disgusting behaviour of his pupil at the
+dinner-table, taught Adrian to understand, though the young
+gentleman was clever in excuses, that he had somehow learnt there
+was another half to the divided Apple of Creation, and had embarked
+upon the great voyage of discovery of the difference between the two
+halves. With his usual coolness Adrian debated whether he might be
+in the observatory or the practical stage of the voyage. For
+himself, as a man and a philosopher, Adrian had no objection to its
+being either; and he had only to consider which was temporarily most
+threatening to the ridiculous System he had to support. Richard's
+absence annoyed him. The youth was vivacious, and his enthusiasm
+good fun; and besides, when he left table, Adrian had to sit alone
+with Hippias and the Eighteenth Century, from both of whom he had
+extracted all the amusement that could be got, and he saw his
+digestion menaced by the society of two ruined stomachs, who bored
+him just when he loved himself most. Poor Hippias was now so reduced
+that he had profoundly to calculate whether a particular dish, or an
+extra glass of wine, would have a bitter effect on him and be felt
+through the remainder of his years. He was in the habit of uttering
+his calculations half aloud, wherein the prophetic doubts of
+experience, and the succulent insinuations of appetite, contended
+hotly. It was horrible to hear him, so let us pardon Adrian for
+tempting him to a decision in favour of the moment.
+
+"Happy to take wine with you," Adrian would say, and Hippias would
+regard the decanter with a pained forehead, and put up the doctor.
+
+"Drink, nephew Hippy, and think of the doctor to-morrow!" the
+Eighteenth Century cheerily ruffles her cap at him, and recommends
+her own practice.
+
+"It's this literary work!" interjects Hippias, handling his glass of
+remorse. "I don't know what else it can be. You have no idea how
+anxious I feel. I have frightful dreams. I'm perpetually anxious."
+
+"No wonder," says Adrian, who enjoys the childish simplicity to
+which an absorbed study of his sensational existence has brought
+poor Hippias. "No wonder. Ten years of Fairy Mythology! Could any
+one hope to sleep in peace after that? As to your digestion, no one
+has a digestion who is in the doctor's hands. They prescribe from
+dogmas, and don't count on the system. They have cut down from two
+bottles to two glasses. It's absurd. You can't sleep, because your
+system is crying out for what it's accustomed to."
+
+Hippias sips his Madeira with a niggardly confidence, but assures
+Adrian that he really should not like to venture on a bottle now: it
+would be rank madness to venture on a bottle now, he thinks. Last
+night only, after partaking, under protest, of that rich French
+dish, or was it the duck?--Adrian advised him to throw the blame on
+that vulgar bird.--Say the duck, then. Last night, he was no sooner
+stretched in bed, than he seemed to be of an enormous size: all his
+limbs--his nose, his mouth, his toes--were elephantine! An elephant
+was a pigmy to him. And his hugeousness seemed to increase the
+instant he shut his eyes. He turned on this side; he turned on that.
+He lay on his back; he tried putting his face to the pillow; and he
+continued to swell. He wondered the room could hold him--he thought
+he must burst it--and absolutely lit a candle, and went to the
+looking-glass to see whether he was bearable.
+
+By this time Adrian and Richard were laughing uncontrollably. He
+had, however, a genial auditor in the Eighteenth Century, who
+declared it to be a new disease, not known in her day, and deserving
+investigation. She was happy to compare sensations with him, but
+hers were not of the complex order, and a potion soon righted her.
+In fact, her system appeared to be a debatable ground for aliment
+and medicine, on which the battle was fought, and, when over, she
+was none the worse, as she joyfully told Hippias. Never looked
+ploughman on prince, or village belle on Court Beauty, with half the
+envy poor Nineteenth-century Hippias expended in his gaze on the
+Eighteenth. He was too serious to note much the laughter of the
+young men.
+
+This "Tragedy of a Cooking-Apparatus," as Adrian designated the
+malady of Hippias, was repeated regularly every evening. It was
+natural for any youth to escape as quick as he could from such a
+table of stomachs.
+
+Adrian bore with his conduct considerately, until a letter from the
+baronet, describing the house and maternal System of a Mrs. Caroline
+Grandison, and the rough grain of hopefulness in her youngest
+daughter, spurred him to think of his duties, and see what was going
+on. He gave Richard half-an-hour's start, and then put on his hat to
+follow his own keen scent, leaving Hippias and the Eighteenth
+Century to piquet.
+
+In the lane near Belthorpe he met a maid of the farm not unknown to
+him, one Molly Davenport by name, a buxom lass, who, on seeing him,
+invoked her Good Gracious, the generic maid's familiar, and was
+instructed by reminiscences vivid, if ancient, to giggle.
+
+"Are you looking for your young gentleman?" Molly presently asked.
+
+Adrian glanced about the lane like a cool brigand, to see if the
+coast was clear, and replied to her, "I am, miss. I want you to tell
+me about him."
+
+"Dear!" said the buxom lass, "was you coming for me to-night to
+know?"
+
+Adrian rebuked her: for her bad grammar, apparently.
+
+"'Cause I can't stop out long to-night," Molly explained, taking the
+rebuke to refer altogether to her bad grammar.
+
+"You may go in when you please, miss. Is that any one coming? Come
+here in the shade."
+
+"Now, get along!" said Miss Molly.
+
+Adrian spoke with resolution. "Listen to me, Molly Davenport!" He
+put a coin in her hand, which had a medical effect in calming her
+to attention. "I want to know whether you have seen him at all?"
+
+"Who? Your young gentleman? I sh'd think I did. I seen him to-night
+only. Ain't he growed handsome. He's al'ays about Beltharp now. It
+ain't to fire no more ricks. He's afire 'unself. Ain't you seen 'em
+together? He's after the missis"----
+
+Adrian requested Miss Davenport to be respectful, and confine
+herself to particulars. This buxom lass then told him that her young
+missis and Adrian's young gentleman were a pretty couple, and met
+one another every night. The girl swore for their innocence.
+
+"As for Miss Lucy, she haven't a bit of art in her, nor have he."
+
+"They're all nature, I suppose," said Adrian. "How is it I don't see
+her at church?"
+
+"She's Catholic, or somethink," said Molly. "Her feyther was, and a
+leftenant. She've a Cross in her bedroom. She don't go to church. I
+see you there last Sunday a-lookin' so solemn," and Molly stroked
+her hand down her chin to give it length.
+
+Adrian insisted on her keeping to facts. It was dark, and in the
+dark he was indifferent to the striking contrasts suggested by the
+lass, but he wanted to hear facts, and he again bribed her to impart
+nothing but facts. Upon which she told him further, that her young
+lady was an innocent artless creature who had been to school upwards
+of three years with the nuns, and had a little money of her own, and
+was beautiful enough to be a lord's lady, and had been in love with
+Master Richard ever since she was a little girl. Molly had got from
+a friend of hers up at the Abbey, Mary Garner, the housemaid who
+cleaned Master Richard's room, a bit of paper once with the young
+gentleman's handwriting, and had given it to her Miss Lucy, and Miss
+Lucy had given her a gold sovereign for it--just for his
+handwriting! Miss Lucy did not seem happy at the farm, because of
+that young Tom, who was always leering at her, and to be sure she
+was quite a lady, and could play, and sing, and dress with the best.
+
+"She looks like angels in her nightgown!" Molly wound up.
+
+The next moment she ran up close, and speaking for the first time as
+if there were a distinction of position between them, petitioned:
+"Mr. Harley! you won't go for doin' any harm to 'em 'cause of what I
+said, will you now? Do say you won't now, Mr. Harley! She is good,
+though she's a Catholic. She was kind to me when I was ill, and I
+wouldn't have her crossed--I'd rather be showed up myself, I would!"
+
+The wise youth gave no positive promise to Molly, and she had to
+read his consent in a relaxation of his austerity. The noise of a
+lumbering foot plodding down the lane caused her to be abruptly
+dismissed. Molly took to flight, the lumbering foot accelerated its
+pace, and the pastoral appeal to her flying skirts was heard--"Moll!
+yau theyre! It be I--Bantam!" But the sprightly Silvia would not
+stop to his wooing, and Adrian turned away laughing at these
+Arcadians.
+
+Adrian was a lazy dragon. All he did for the present was to hint and
+tease. "It's the Inevitable!" he said, and asked himself why he
+should seek to arrest it. He had no faith in the System. Heavy
+Benson had. Benson of the slow thick-lidded antediluvian eye and
+loose-crumpled skin; Benson, the Saurian, the woman-hater; Benson
+was wide awake. A sort of rivalry existed between the wise youth and
+heavy Benson. The fidelity of the latter dependant had moved the
+baronet to commit to him a portion of the management of the Raynham
+estate, and this Adrian did not like. No one who aspires to the
+honourable office of leading another by the nose can tolerate a
+party in his ambition. Benson's surly instinct told him he was in
+the wise youth's way, and he resolved to give his master a striking
+proof of his superior faithfulness. For some weeks the Saurian eye
+had been on the two secret creatures. Heavy Benson saw letters come
+and go in the day, and now the young gentleman was off and out every
+night, and seemed to be on wings. Benson knew whither he went, and
+the object he went for. It was a woman--that was enough. The Saurian
+eye had actually seen the sinful thing lure the hope of Raynham into
+the shades. He composed several epistles of warning to the baronet
+of the work that was going on; but before sending one he wished to
+record a little of their guilty conversation; and for this purpose
+the faithful fellow trotted over the dews to eavesdrop, and thereby
+aroused the good fairy, in the person of Tom Bakewell, the sole
+confidant of Richard's state.
+
+Tom said to his young master, "Do you know what, sir? You be
+watched!"
+
+Richard, in a fury, bade him name the wretch, and Tom hung his arms,
+and aped the respectable protrusion of the butler's head.
+
+"It's he, is it?" cried Richard. "He shall rue it, Tom. If I find
+him near me when we're together he shall never forget it."
+
+"Don't hit too hard, sir," Tom suggested. "You hit mortal hard when
+you're in earnest, you know."
+
+Richard averred he would forgive anything but that, and told Tom to
+be within hail to-morrow night--he knew where. By the hour of the
+appointment it was out of the lover's mind.
+
+Lady Blandish dined that evening at Raynham, by Adrian's pointed
+invitation. According to custom, Richard started up and off, with
+few excuses. The lady exhibited no surprise. She and Adrian likewise
+strolled forth to enjoy the air of the Summer night. They had no
+intention of spying. Still they may have thought, by meeting Richard
+and his inamorata, there was a chance of laying a foundation of
+ridicule to sap the passion. They may have thought so--they were on
+no spoken understanding.
+
+"I have seen the little girl," said Lady Blandish. "She is
+pretty--she would be telling if she were well set up. She speaks
+well. How absurd it is of that class to educate their women above
+their station! The child is really too good for a farmer. I noticed
+her before I knew of this; she has enviable hair. I suppose she
+doesn't paint her eyelids. Just the sort of person to take a young
+man. I thought there was something wrong. I received, the day before
+yesterday, an impassioned poem evidently not intended for me. My
+hair was gold. My meeting him was foretold. My eyes were homes of
+light fringed with night. I sent it back, correcting the colours."
+
+"Which was death to the rhymes," said Adrian. "I saw her this
+morning. The boy hasn't bad taste. As you say, she is too good for
+a farmer. Such a spark would explode any System. She slightly
+affected mine. The Huron is stark mad about her."
+
+"But we must positively write and tell his father," said Lady
+Blandish.
+
+The wise youth did not see why they should exaggerate a trifle. The
+lady said she would have an interview with Richard, and then write,
+as it was her duty to do. Adrian shrugged, and was for going into
+the scientific explanation of Richard's conduct, in which the lady
+had to discourage him.
+
+"Poor boy!" she sighed. "I am really sorry for him. I hope he will
+not feel it too strongly. They feel strongly, father and son."
+
+"And select wisely," Adrian added.
+
+"That's another thing," said Lady Blandish.
+
+Their talk was then of the dulness of neighbouring county people,
+about whom, it seemed, there was little or no scandal afloat: of the
+lady's loss of the season in town, which she professed not to
+regret, though she complained of her general weariness: of whether
+Mr. Morton of Poer Hall would propose to Mrs. Doria, and of the
+probable despair of the hapless curate of Lobourne; and other
+gossip, partly in French.
+
+They rounded the lake, and got upon the road through the park to
+Lobourne. The moon had risen. The atmosphere was warm and pleasant.
+
+"Quite a lover's night," said Lady Blandish.
+
+"And I, who have none to love--pity me!" The wise youth attempted a
+sigh.
+
+"And never will have," said Lady Blandish, curtly. "You _buy_ your
+loves."
+
+Adrian protested. However, he did not plead verbally against the
+impeachment, though the lady's decisive insight astonished him. He
+began to respect her, relishing her exquisite contempt, and he
+reflected that widows could be terrible creatures.
+
+He had hoped to be a little sentimental with Lady Blandish, knowing
+her romantic. This mixture of the harshest common sense and an air
+of "_I_ know you men," with romance and refined temperament, subdued
+the wise youth more than a positive accusation supported by
+witnesses would have done. He looked at the lady. Her face was
+raised to the moon. She knew nothing--she had simply spoken from the
+fulness of her human knowledge, and had forgotten her words.
+Perhaps, after all, her admiration, or whatever feeling it was, for
+the baronet, was sincere, and really the longing for a virtuous man.
+Perhaps she had tried the opposite set pretty much. Adrian shrugged.
+Whenever the wise youth encountered a mental difficulty he
+instinctively lifted his shoulders to equal altitudes, to show that
+he had no doubt there was a balance in the case--plenty to be said
+on both sides, which was the same to him as a definite solution.
+
+At their tryst in the wood, abutting on Raynham Park, wrapped in
+themselves, piped to by tireless Love, Richard and Lucy sat, toying
+with eternal moments. How they seem as if they would never end! What
+mere sparks they are when they have died out! And how in the
+distance of time they revive, and extend, and glow, and make us
+think them full the half, and the best of the fire, of our lives!
+
+With the onward flow of intimacy, the two happy lovers ceased to be
+so shy of common themes, and their speech did not reject all as
+dross that was not pure gold of emotion.
+
+Lucy was very inquisitive about everything and everybody at Raynham.
+Whoever had been about Richard since his birth, she must know the
+history of, and he for a kiss will do her bidding.
+
+Thus goes the tender duet:
+
+"You should know my cousin Austin, Lucy.--Darling! Beloved!"
+
+"My own! Richard!"
+
+"You should know my cousin Austin. You shall know him. He would take
+to you best of them all, and you to him. He is in the tropics now,
+looking out a place--it's a secret--for poor English working-men to
+emigrate to and found a colony in that part of the world:--my white
+angel!"
+
+"Dear love!"
+
+"He is such a noble fellow! Nobody here understands him but me.
+Isn't it strange? Since I met you I love him better! That's because
+I love all that's good and noble better now--Beautiful! I love--I
+love you!"
+
+"My Richard!"
+
+"What do you think I've determined, Lucy? If my father----but no! my
+father does love me.--No! he will not; and we will be happy together
+here. And I will win my way with you. And whatever I win will be
+yours; for it will be owing to you. I feel as if I had no strength
+but yours--none! and you make me--O Lucy!"
+
+His voice ebbs. Presently Lucy murmurs--
+
+"Your father, Richard."
+
+"Yes, my father?"
+
+"Dearest Richard! I feel so afraid of him."
+
+"He loves me, and will love you, Lucy."
+
+"But I am so poor and humble, Richard."
+
+"No one I have ever seen is like you, Lucy."
+
+"You think so, because you"----
+
+"What?"
+
+"Love me," comes the blushing whisper, and the duet gives place to
+dumb variations, performed equally in concert.
+
+It is resumed.
+
+"You are fond of the knights, Lucy. Austin is as brave as any of
+them.--My own bride! Oh, how I adore you! When you are gone, I could
+fall upon the grass you tread upon, and kiss it. My breast feels
+empty of my heart--Lucy! if we lived in those days, I should have
+been a knight, and have won honour and glory for you. Oh! one can do
+nothing now. My lady-love! My lady-love!--A tear?--Lucy?"
+
+"Dearest! Ah, Richard! I am not a lady."
+
+"Who dares say that? Not a lady--the angel I love!"
+
+"Think, Richard, who I am."
+
+"My beautiful! I think that God made you, and has given you to me."
+
+Her eyes fill with tears, and, as she lifts them heavenward to thank
+her God, the light of heaven strikes on them, and she is so radiant
+in her pure beauty that the limbs of the young man tremble.
+
+"Lucy! O heavenly spirit! Lucy!"
+
+Tenderly her lips part--"I do not weep for sorrow."
+
+The big bright drops lighten, and roll down, imaged in his soul.
+
+They lean together--shadows of ineffable tenderness playing on their
+thrilled cheeks and brows.
+
+He lifts her hand, and presses his mouth to it. She has seen little
+of mankind, but her soul tells her this one is different from
+others, and at the thought, in her great joy, tears must come fast,
+or her heart will break--tears of boundless thanksgiving. And he,
+gazing on those soft, ray-illumined, dark-edged eyes, and the grace
+of her loose falling tresses, feels a scarce-sufferable holy fire
+streaming through his members.
+
+It is long ere they speak in open tones.
+
+"O happy day when we met!"
+
+What says the voice of one, the soul of the other echoes.
+
+"O glorious heaven looking down on us!"
+
+Their souls are joined, are made one for evermore beneath that
+bending benediction.
+
+"O eternity of bliss!"
+
+Then the diviner mood passes, and they drop to earth.
+
+"Lucy! come with me to-night, and look at the place where you are
+some day to live. Come, and I will row you on the lake. You remember
+what you said in your letter that you dreamt?--that we were floating
+over the shadow of the Abbey to the nuns at work by torchlight
+felling the cypress, and they handed us each a sprig. Why, darling,
+it was the best omen in the world, their felling the old trees. And
+you write such lovely letters. So pure and sweet they are. I love
+the nuns for having taught you."
+
+"Ah, Richard! See! we forget! Ah!" she lifts up her face pleadingly,
+as to plead against herself, "even if your father forgives my birth,
+he will not my religion. And, dearest, though I would die for you I
+cannot change it. It would seem that I was denying God; and--oh! it
+would make me ashamed of my love."
+
+"Fear nothing!" He winds her about with his arm. "Come! He will love
+us both, and love you the more for being faithful to your father's
+creed. You don't know him, Lucy. He seems harsh and stern--he is
+full of kindness and love. He isn't at all a bigot. And besides,
+when he hears what the nuns have done for you, won't he thank them,
+as I do? And--oh! I must speak to him soon, and you must be prepared
+to see him soon, for I cannot bear your remaining at Belthorpe, like
+a jewel in a sty. Mind! I'm not saying a word against your uncle. I
+declare I love everybody and everything that sees you and touches
+you. Stay! it _is_ a wonder how you could have grown there. But you
+were not born there, and your father had good blood. Desborough!--there
+was a Colonel Desborough--never mind! Come!"
+
+She dreads to. She begs not to. She is drawn away.
+
+The woods are silent, and then--
+
+"What think you of that for a pretty pastoral?" says a very
+different voice.
+
+Adrian reclined against a pine overlooking the fern-covert. Lady
+Blandish was recumbent upon the brown pine-droppings, gazing through
+a vista of the lower greenwood which opened out upon the
+moon-lighted valley, her hands clasped round one knee, her features
+almost stern in their set hard expression.
+
+They had heard, by involuntarily overhearing about as much as may be
+heard in such positions, a luminous word or two.
+
+The lady did not answer. A movement among the ferns attracted
+Adrian, and he stepped down the decline across the pine-roots to
+behold heavy Benson below, shaking fern-seed and spidery substances
+off his crumpled skin.
+
+"Is that you, Mr. Hadrian?" called Benson, starting, as he puffed,
+and exercised his handkerchief.
+
+"Is it _you_, Benson, who have had the audacity to spy upon these
+Mysteries?" Adrian called back, and coming close to him, added, "You
+look as if you had just been well thrashed."
+
+"Isn't it dreadful, sir?" snuffled Benson. "And his father in
+ignorance, Mr. Hadrian!"
+
+"He shall know, Benson! He shall know how you have endangered your
+valuable skin in his service. If Mr. Richard had found you there
+just now I wouldn't answer for the consequences."
+
+"Ha!" Benson spitefully retorted. "This won't go on, Mr. Hadrian. It
+shan't, sir. It will be put a stop to to-morrow, sir. I call it
+corruption of a young gentleman like him, and harlotry, sir, I call
+it. I'd have every jade flogged that made a young innocent gentleman
+go on like that, sir."
+
+"Then why didn't you stop it yourself, Benson? Ah, I see! you
+waited--what? This is not the first time you have been attendant on
+Apollo and Miss Dryope? You have written to headquarters?"
+
+"I did my duty, Mr. Hadrian."
+
+The wise youth returned to Lady Blandish, and informed her of
+Benson's zeal. The lady's eyes flashed. "I hope Richard will treat
+him as he deserves," she said.
+
+"Shall we home?" Adrian inquired.
+
+"Do me a favour," the lady replied. "Get my carriage sent round to
+meet me at the park-gates."
+
+"Won't you?"--
+
+"I want to be alone."
+
+Adrian bowed and left her. She was still sitting with her hands
+clasped round one knee, gazing towards the dim ray-strewn valley.
+
+"An odd creature!" muttered the wise youth. "She's as odd as any of
+them. She ought to be a Feverel. I suppose she's graduating for it.
+Hang that confounded old ass of a Benson! He has had the impudence
+to steal a march on me!"
+
+The shadow of the cypress was lessening on the lake. The moon was
+climbing high. As Richard rowed the boat, Lucy sang to him softly.
+She sang first a fresh little French song, reminding him of a day
+when she had been asked to sing to him before, and he did not care
+to hear. "Did I live?" he thinks. Then she sang to him a bit of one
+of those majestic old Gregorian chants, that, wherever you may hear
+them, seem to build up cathedral walls about you. The young man
+dropped the sculls. The strange solemn notes gave a religious tone
+to his love, and wafted him into the knightly ages and the
+reverential heart of chivalry.
+
+Hanging between two heavens on the lake: floating to her voice: the
+moon stepping over and through white shoals of soft high clouds
+above and below: floating to her voice--no other breath abroad! His
+soul went out of his body as he listened.
+
+They must part. He rows her gently shoreward.
+
+"I never was so happy as to-night," she murmurs.
+
+"Look, my Lucy. The lights of the old place are on the lake. Look
+where you are to live."
+
+"Which is your room, Richard?"
+
+He points it out to her.
+
+"O Richard! that I were one of the women who wait on you! I should
+ask nothing more. How happy she must be!"
+
+"My darling angel-love. You shall be happy; but all shall wait on
+you, and I foremost, Lucy."
+
+"Dearest! may I hope for a letter?"
+
+"By eleven to-morrow. And I?"
+
+"Oh! you will have mine, Richard."
+
+"Tom shall wait for it. A long one, mind! Did you like my last
+song?"
+
+She puts her hand quietly against her bosom, and he knows where it
+rests. O love! O heaven!
+
+They are aroused by the harsh grating of the bow of the boat against
+the shingle. He jumps out, and lifts her ashore.
+
+"See!" she says, as the blush of his embrace subsides--"See!" and
+prettily she mimics awe and feels it a little, "the cypress does
+point towards us. O Richard! it does!"
+
+And he, looking at her rather than at the cypress, delighting in her
+arch grave ways--
+
+"Why, there's hardly any shadow at all, Lucy. She mustn't dream, my
+darling! or dream only of me."
+
+"Dearest! but I do."
+
+"To-morrow, Lucy! The letter in the morning, and you at night. O
+happy to-morrow!"
+
+"You will be sure to be there, Richard?"
+
+"If I am not dead, Lucy."
+
+"O Richard! pray, pray do not speak of that. I shall not survive
+you."
+
+"Let us pray, Lucy, to die together, when we are to die. Death or
+life, with you! Who is it yonder? I see some one--is it Tom? It's
+Adrian!"
+
+"Is it Mr. Harley?" The fair girl shivered.
+
+"How dares he come here!" cried Richard.
+
+The figure of Adrian, instead of advancing, discreetly circled the
+lake. They were stealing away when he called. His call was repeated.
+Lucy entreated Richard to go to him; but the young man preferred to
+summon his attendant, Tom, from within hail, and send him to know
+what was wanted.
+
+"Will he have seen me? Will he have known me?" whispered Lucy,
+tremulously.
+
+"And if he does, love?" said Richard.
+
+"Oh! if he does, dearest--I don't know, but I feel such a
+presentiment. You have not spoken of him to-night, Richard. Is he
+good?"
+
+"Good?" Richard clutched her hand for the innocent maiden phrase.
+"He's very fond of eating; that's all I know of Adrian."
+
+Her hand was at his lips when Tom returned.
+
+"Well, Tom?"
+
+"Mr. Adrian wishes particular to speak to you, sir," said Tom.
+
+"Do go to him, dearest! Do go!" Lucy begs him.
+
+"Oh, how I hate Adrian!" The young man grinds his teeth.
+
+"Do go!" Lucy urges him. "Tom--good Tom--will see me home.
+To-morrow, dear love! To-morrow!"
+
+"You wish to part from me?"
+
+"Oh, unkind! but you must not come with me now. It may be news of
+importance, dearest. Think, Richard!"
+
+"Tom! go back!"
+
+At the imperious command the well-drilled Tom strides off a dozen
+paces, and sees nothing. Than the precious charge is confided to
+him. A heart is cut in twain.
+
+Richard made his way to Adrian. "What is it you want with me,
+Adrian?"
+
+"Are we seconds, or principals, O fiery one?" was Adrian's answer.
+"I want nothing with you, except to know whether you have seen
+Benson."
+
+"Where should I see Benson? What do I know of Benson's doings?"
+
+"Of course not--such a secret old fist as he is! I want some one to
+tell him to order Lady Blandish's carriage to be sent round to the
+park-gates. I thought he might be round your way over there--I came
+upon him accidentally just now in Abbey-wood. What's the matter,
+boy?"
+
+"You saw him _there_?"
+
+"Hunting Diana, I suppose. He thinks she's not so chaste as they
+say," continued Adrian. "Are you going to knock down that tree?"
+
+Richard had turned to the cypress, and was tugging at the tough
+wood. He left it and went to an ash.
+
+"You'll spoil that weeper," Adrian cried. "Down she comes! But
+good-night, Ricky. If you see Benson mind you tell him."
+
+Doomed Benson following his burly shadow hove in sight on the white
+road while Adrian spoke. The wise youth chuckled and strolled round
+the lake, glancing over his shoulder every now and then.
+
+It was not long before he heard a bellow for help--the roar of a
+dragon in his throes. Adrian placidly sat down on the grass, and
+fixed his eyes on the water. There, as the roar was being repeated
+amid horrid resounding echoes, the wise youth mused in this wise--
+
+"'The Fates are Jews with us when they delay a punishment,' says THE
+PILGRIM'S SCRIP, or words to that effect. The heavens evidently love
+Benson, seeing that he gets his punishment on the spot. Master Ricky
+is a peppery young man. He gets it from the apt Gruffudh. I rather
+believe in race. What a noise that old ruffian makes! He'll require
+poulticing with THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP. We shall have a message
+to-morrow, and a hubbub, and perhaps all go to town, which won't
+be bad for one who's been a prey to all the desires born of dulness.
+Benson howls: there's life in the old dog yet! He bays the moon.
+Look at her. She doesn't care. It's the same to her whether we coo
+like turtle-doves or roar like twenty lions. How complacent she looks!
+And yet she has just as much sympathy for Benson as for Cupid. She
+would smile on if both were being birched. Was that a raven or Benson?
+He howls no more. It sounds guttural: frog-like--something between
+the brek-kek-kek and the hoarse raven's croak. The fellow'll be
+killing him. It's time to go to the rescue. A deliverer gets more
+honour by coming in at the last gasp than if he forestalled
+catastrophe.--Ho, there, what's the matter?"
+
+So saying, the wise youth rose, and leisurely trotted to the scene
+of battle, where stood St. George puffing over the prostrate Dragon.
+
+"Holloa, Ricky! is it you?" said Adrian. "What's this? Whom have we
+here?--Benson, as I live!"
+
+"Make this beast get up," Richard returned, breathing hard, and
+shaking his great ash-branch.
+
+"He seems incapable, my dear boy. What have you been up
+to?--Benson! Benson!--I say, Ricky, this looks bad."
+
+"He's shamming!" Richard clamoured like a savage. "Spy upon me, will
+he? I tell you, he's shamming. He hasn't had half enough. Nothing's
+too bad for a spy. Let him get up!"
+
+"Insatiated youth! do throw away that enormous weapon."
+
+"He has written to my father," Richard shouted. "The miserable spy!
+Let him get up!"
+
+"Ooogh! I won't!" huskily groaned Benson. "Mr. Hadrian, you're a
+witness he's--my back!"---- Cavernous noises took up the tale of his
+maltreatment.
+
+"I daresay you love your back better than any part of your body
+now," Adrian muttered. "Come, Benson! be a man. Mr. Richard has
+thrown away the stick. Come, and get off home, and let's see the
+extent of the damage."
+
+"Ooogh! he's a devil! Mr. Hadrian, sir, he's a devil!" groaned
+Benson, turning half over in the road to ease his aches.
+
+Adrian caught hold of Benson's collar and lifted him to a sitting
+posture. He then had a glimpse of what his hopeful pupil's hand
+could do in wrath. The wretched butler's coat was slit and welted;
+his hat knocked in; his flabby spirit so broken that he started and
+trembled if his pitiless executioner stirred a foot. Richard stood
+over him, grasping his great stick; no dawn of mercy for Benson in
+any corner of his features.
+
+Benson screwed his neck round to look up at him, and immediately
+gasped, "I won't get up! I won't! He's ready to murder me
+again!--Mr. Hadrian! if you stand by and see it, you're liable to
+the law, sir--I won't get up while he's near." No persuasion could
+induce Benson to try his legs while his executioner stood by.
+
+Adrian took Richard aside: "You've almost killed the poor devil,
+Ricky. You must be satisfied with that. Look at his face."
+
+"The coward bobbed while I struck," said Richard. "I marked his
+back. He ducked. I told him he was getting it worse."
+
+At so civilized piece of savagery, Adrian opened his mouth wide.
+
+"Did you really? I admire that. You told him he was getting it
+worse?"
+
+Adrian opened his mouth again to shake another roll of laughter out.
+
+"Come," he said, "Excalibur has done his work. Pitch him into the
+lake. And see--here comes the Blandish. You can't be at it again
+before a woman. Go and meet her, and tell her the noise was an ox
+being slaughtered. Or say Argus."
+
+With a whirr that made all Benson's bruises moan and quiver, the
+great ash-branch shot aloft, and Richard swung off to intercept Lady
+Blandish.
+
+Adrian got Benson on his feet. The heavy butler was disposed to
+summon all the commiseration he could feel for his bruised flesh.
+Every half-step he attempted was like a dislocation. His groans and
+grunts were frightful.
+
+"How much did that hat cost, Benson?" said Adrian, as he put it on
+his head.
+
+"A five-and-twenty shilling beaver, Mr. Hadrian!" Benson caressed
+its injuries.
+
+"The cheapest policy of insurance I remember to have heard of!" said
+Adrian.
+
+Benson staggered, moaning at intervals to his cruel comforter--
+
+"He's a devil, Mr. Hadrian! He's a devil, sir, I do believe, sir.
+Ooogh! he's a devil!--I can't move, Mr. Hadrian. I must be fetched.
+And Dr. Clifford must be sent for, sir. I shall never be fit for
+work again. I haven't a sound bone in my body, Mr. Hadrian."
+
+"You see, Benson, this comes of your declaring war upon Venus. I
+hope the maids will nurse you properly. Let me see: you are friends
+with the housekeeper, aren't you? All depends upon that."
+
+"I'm only a faithful servant, Mr. Hadrian," the miserable butler
+snarled.
+
+"Then you've got no friend but your bed. Get to it as quick as
+possible, Benson."
+
+"I can't move." Benson made a resolute halt. "I must be fetched," he
+whinnied. "It's a shame to ask me to move, Mr. Hadrian."
+
+"You will admit that you are heavy, Benson," said Adrian, "so I
+can't carry you. However, I see Mr. Richard is very kindly returning
+to help me."
+
+At these words heavy Benson instantly found his legs, and shambled
+on.
+
+Lady Blandish met Richard in dismay.
+
+"I have been horribly frightened," she said. "Tell me, what was the
+meaning of those cries I heard?"
+
+"Only some one doing justice on a spy," said Richard, and the lady
+smiled, and looked on him fondly, and put her hand through his hair.
+
+"Was that all? I should have done it myself if I had been a man.
+Kiss me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+RICHARD IS SUMMONED TO TOWN TO HEAR A SERMON
+
+
+By twelve o'clock at noon next day the inhabitants of Raynham Abbey
+knew that Berry, the baronet's man, had arrived post-haste from
+town, with orders to conduct Mr. Richard thither, and that Mr.
+Richard had refused to go, had sworn he would not, defied his
+father, and despatched Berry to the Shades. Berry was all that
+Benson was not. Whereas Benson hated woman, Berry admired her
+warmly. Second to his own stately person, woman occupied his
+reflections, and commanded his homage. Berry was of majestic port,
+and used dictionary words. Among the maids of Raynham his conscious
+calves produced all the discord and the frenzy those adornments seem
+destined to create in tender bosoms. He had, moreover, the
+reputation of having suffered for the sex; which assisted his object
+in inducing the sex to suffer for him. What with his calves, and his
+dictionary words, and the attractive halo of the mysterious
+vindictiveness of Venus surrounding him, this Adonis of the lower
+household was a mighty man below, and he moved as one.
+
+On hearing the tumult that followed Berry's arrival, Adrian sent for
+him, and was informed of the nature of his mission, and its result.
+
+"You should come to me first," said Adrian. "I should have imagined
+you were shrewd enough for that, Berry?"
+
+"Pardon me, Mr. Adrian," Berry doubled his elbow to explain. "Pardon
+me, sir. Acting recipient of special injunctions I was not a free
+agent."
+
+"Go to Mr. Richard again, Berry. There will be a little confusion if
+he holds back. Perhaps you had better throw out a hint or so of
+apoplexy. A slight hint will do. And here--Berry! when you return to
+town, you had better not mention anything--to quote Johnson--of
+Benson's spiflication."
+
+"Certainly not, sir."
+
+The wise youth's hint had the desired effect on Richard.
+
+He dashed off a hasty letter by Tom to Belthorpe, and, mounting his
+horse, galloped to the Bellingham station.
+
+Sir Austin was sitting down to a quiet early dinner at his hotel,
+when the Hope of Raynham burst into his room.
+
+The baronet was not angry with his son. On the contrary, for he was
+singularly just and self-accusing while pride was not up in arms, he
+had been thinking all day after the receipt of Benson's letter that
+he was deficient in cordiality, and did not, by reason of his
+excessive anxiety, make himself sufficiently his son's companion:
+was not enough, as he strove to be, mother and father to him;
+preceptor and friend; previsor and associate. He had not to ask his
+conscience where he had lately been to blame towards the System. He
+had slunk away from Raynham in the very crisis of the Magnetic Age,
+and this young woman of the parish (as Benson had termed sweet Lucy
+in his letter) was the consequence.
+
+Yes! pride and sensitiveness were his chief foes, and he would
+trample on them. To begin, he embraced his son: hard upon an
+Englishman at any time--doubly so to one so shamefaced at emotion in
+cool blood, as it were. It gave him a strange pleasure,
+nevertheless. And the youth seemed to answer to it; he was excited.
+Was his love, then, beginning to correspond with his father's as in
+those intimate days before the Blossoming Season?
+
+But when Richard, inarticulate at first in his haste, cried out, "My
+dear, dear father! You are safe! I feared----You are better, sir?
+Thank God!" Sir Austin stood away from him.
+
+"Safe?" he said. "What has alarmed you?"
+
+Instead of replying, Richard dropped into a chair, and seized his
+hand and kissed it.
+
+Sir Austin took a seat, and waited for his son to explain.
+
+"Those doctors are such fools!" Richard broke out. "I was sure they
+were wrong. They don't know headache from apoplexy. It's worth the
+ride, sir, to see you. You left Raynham so suddenly.--But you are
+well! It was not an attack of real apoplexy?"
+
+His father's brows contorted, and he said, No, it was not. Richard
+pursued:
+
+"If you were ill, I couldn't come too soon, though, if coroners'
+inquests sat on horses, those doctors would be found guilty of
+mare-slaughter. Cassandra'll be knocked up. I was too early for the
+train at Bellingham, and I wouldn't wait. She did the distance in
+four hours and three-quarters. Pretty good, sir, wasn't it?"
+
+"It has given you appetite for dinner, I hope," said the baronet,
+not so well pleased to find that it was not simple obedience that
+had brought the youth to him in such haste.
+
+"I'm ready," replied Richard. "I shall be in time to return by the
+last train to-night. I will leave Cassandra in your charge for a
+rest."
+
+His father quietly helped him to soup, which he commenced gobbling
+with an eagerness that might pass for appetite.
+
+"All well at Raynham?" said the baronet.
+
+"Quite, sir."
+
+"Nothing new?"
+
+"Nothing, sir."
+
+"The same as when I left?"
+
+"No change whatever!"
+
+"I shall be glad to get back to the old place," said the baronet.
+"My stay in town has certainly been profitable. I have made some
+pleasant acquaintances who may probably favour us with a visit there
+in the late autumn--people you may be pleased to know. They are very
+anxious to see Raynham."
+
+"I love the old place," cried Richard. "I never wish to leave it."
+
+"Why, boy, before I left you were constantly begging to see town."
+
+"Was I, sir? How odd! Well! I don't want to remain here. I've seen
+enough of it."
+
+"How did you find your way to me?"
+
+Richard laughed, and related his bewilderment at the miles of brick,
+and the noise, and the troops of people, concluding, "There's no
+place like home!"
+
+The baronet watched his symptomatic brilliant eyes, and favoured him
+with a double-dealing sentence--
+
+"To anchor the heart by any object ere we have half traversed the
+world, is youth's foolishness, my son. Reverence time! A better
+maxim that than your Horatian."
+
+"He knows all!" thought Richard, and instantly drew away leagues
+from his father, and threw up fortifications round his love and
+himself.
+
+Dinner over, Richard looked hurriedly at his watch, and said, with
+much briskness, "I shall just be in time, sir, if we walk. Will you
+come with me to the station?"
+
+The baronet did not answer.
+
+Richard was going to repeat the question, but found his father's
+eyes fixed on him so meaningly that he wavered, and played with his
+empty glass.
+
+"I think we will have a little more claret," said the baronet.
+
+Claret was brought, and they were left alone.
+
+The baronet then drew within arm's-reach of his son, and began:
+
+"I am not aware what you may have thought of me, Richard, during the
+years we have lived together; and indeed I have never been in a
+hurry to be known to you; and, if I had died before my work was
+done, I should not have complained at losing half my reward, in
+hearing you thank me. Perhaps, as it is, I never may. Everything,
+save selfishness, has its recompense. I shall be content if you
+prosper."
+
+He fetched a breath and continued: "You had in your infancy a great
+loss." Father and son coloured simultaneously. "To make that good to
+you I chose to isolate myself from the world, and devote myself
+entirely to your welfare; and I think it is not vanity that tells me
+now that the son I have reared is one of the most hopeful of God's
+creatures. But for that very reason you are open to be tempted the
+most, and to sink the deepest. It was the first of the angels who
+made the road to hell."
+
+He paused again. Richard fingered at his watch.
+
+"In our House, my son, there is peculiar blood. We go to wreck very
+easily. It sounds like superstition; I cannot but think we are tried
+as most men are not. I see it in us all. And you, my son, are
+compounded of two races. Your passions are violent. You have had a
+taste of revenge. You have seen, in a small way, that the pound of
+flesh draws rivers of blood. But there is now in you another power.
+You are mounting to the table-land of life, where mimic battles are
+changed to real ones. And you come upon it laden equally with force
+to create and to destroy." He deliberated to announce the
+intelligence, with deep meaning: "There are women in the world, my
+son!"
+
+The young man's heart galloped back to Raynham.
+
+"It is when you encounter them that you are thoroughly on trial. It
+is when you know them that life is either a mockery to you, or, as
+some find it, a gift of blessedness. They are our ordeal. Love of
+any human object is the soul's ordeal; and they are ours, loving
+them, or not."
+
+The young man heard the whistle of the train. He saw the
+moon-lighted wood, and the vision of his beloved. He could barely
+hold himself down and listen.
+
+"I believe," the baronet spoke with little of the cheerfulness of
+belief, "good women exist."
+
+Oh, if he knew Lucy!
+
+"But," and he gazed on Richard intently, "it is given to very few to
+meet them on the threshold--I may say, to none. We find them after
+hard buffeting, and usually, when we find the one fitted for us, our
+madness has misshaped our destiny, our lot is cast. For women are
+not the end, but the means, of life. In youth we think them the
+former, and thousands, who have not even the excuse of youth, select
+a mate--or worse--with that sole view. I believe women punish us for
+so perverting their uses. They punish Society."
+
+The baronet put his hand to his brow as his mind travelled into
+consequences.
+
+"Our most diligent pupil learns not so much as an earnest teacher,"
+says The Pilgrim's Scrip; and Sir Austin, in schooling himself to
+speak with moderation of women, was beginning to get a glimpse of
+their side of the case.
+
+Cold Blood now touched on love to Hot Blood.
+
+Cold Blood said, "It is a passion coming in the order of nature, the
+ripe fruit of our animal being."
+
+Hot Blood felt: "It is a divinity! All that is worth living for in
+the world."
+
+Cold Blood said: "It is a fever which tests our strength, and too
+often leads to perdition."
+
+Hot Blood felt: "Lead whither it will, I follow it."
+
+Cold Blood said: "It is a name men and women are much in the habit
+of employing to sanctify their appetites."
+
+Hot Blood felt: "It is worship; religion; life!"
+
+And so the two parallel lines ran on.
+
+The baronet became more personal:
+
+"You know my love for you, my son. The extent of it you cannot know;
+but you must know that it is something very deep, and--I do not wish
+to speak of it--but a father must sometimes petition for gratitude,
+since the only true expression of it is his son's moral good. If you
+care for my love, or love me in return, aid me with all your
+energies to keep you what I have made you, and guard you from the
+snares besetting you. It was in my hands once. It is ceasing to be
+so. Remember, my son, what my love is. It is different, I fear, with
+most fathers: but I am bound up in your welfare: what you do affects
+me vitally. You will take no step that is not intimate with my
+happiness, or my misery. And I have had great disappointments, my
+son."
+
+So far it was well. Richard loved his father, and even in his
+frenzied state he could not without emotion hear him thus speak.
+
+Unhappily, the baronet, who by some fatality never could see when he
+was winning the battle, thought proper in his wisdom to water the
+dryness of his sermon with a little jocoseness, on the subject of
+young men fancying themselves in love, and, when they were raw and
+green, absolutely wanting to be--that most awful thing, which, the
+wisest and strongest of men undertake in hesitation and after
+self-mortification and penance--married! He sketched the Foolish
+Young Fellow--the object of general ridicule and covert contempt. He
+sketched the Woman--the strange thing made in our image, and with
+all our faculties--passing to the rule of one who in taking her
+proved that he could not rule himself, and had no knowledge of her
+save as a choice morsel which he would burn the whole world, and
+himself in the bargain, to possess. He harped upon the Foolish Young
+Fellow, till the foolish young fellow felt his skin tingle and was
+half-suffocated with shame and rage.
+
+After this, the baronet might be as wise as he pleased: he had quite
+undone his work. He might analyze Love and anatomize Woman. He might
+accord to her her due position, and paint her fair: he might be
+shrewd, jocose, gentle, pathetic, wonderfully wise: he spoke to deaf
+ears.
+
+Closing his sermon with the question, softly uttered: "Have you
+anything to tell me, Richard?" and hoping for a confession, and a
+thorough re-establishment of confidence, the callous answer struck
+him cold: "I have not."
+
+The baronet relapsed in his chair, and made diagrams of his fingers.
+
+Richard turned his back on further dialogue by going to the window.
+In the section of sky over the street twinkled two or three stars;
+shining faintly, feeling the moon. The moon was rising: the woods
+were lifting up to her: his star of the woods would be there. A bed
+of moss set about flowers in a basket under him breathed to his
+nostril of the woodland keenly, and filled him with delirious
+longing.
+
+A succession of hard sighs brought his father's hand on his
+shoulder.
+
+"You have nothing you could say to me, my son? Tell me, Richard!
+Remember, there is no home for the soul where dwells a shadow of
+untruth!"
+
+"Nothing at all, sir," the young man replied, meeting him with the
+full orbs of his eyes.
+
+The baronet withdrew his hand, and paced the room.
+
+At last it grew impossible for Richard to control his impatience,
+and he said: "Do you intend me to stay here, sir? Am I not to return
+to Raynham at all to-night?"
+
+His father was again falsely jocular:
+
+"What? and catch the train after giving it ten minutes' start?"
+
+"Cassandra will take me," said the young man earnestly. "I needn't
+ride her hard, sir. Or perhaps you would lend me your Winkelried? I
+should be down with him in little better than three hours."
+
+"Even then, you know, the park-gates would be locked."
+
+"Well, I could stable him in the village. Dowling knows the horse,
+and would treat him properly. May I have him, sir?"
+
+The cloud cleared off Richard's face as he asked. At least, if he
+missed his love that night he would be near her, breathing the same
+air, marking what star was above her bedchamber, hearing the hushed
+night-talk of the trees about her dwelling: looking on the distances
+that were like hope half-fulfilled and a bodily presence bright as
+Hesper, since he knew her. There were two swallows under the eaves
+shadowing Lucy's chamber-windows: two swallows, mates in one nest,
+blissful birds, who twittered and cheep-cheeped to the sole-lying
+beauty in her bed. Around these birds the lover's heart revolved, he
+knew not why. He associated them with all his close-veiled dreams of
+happiness. Seldom a morning passed when he did not watch them leave
+the nest on their breakfast-flight, busy in the happy stillness of
+dawn. It seemed to him now that if he could be at Raynham to see
+them in to-morrow's dawn he would be compensated for his
+incalculable loss of to-night: he would forgive and love his father,
+London, the life, the world. Just to see those purple backs and
+white breasts flash out into the quiet morning air! He wanted no
+more.
+
+The baronet's trifling had placed this enormous boon within the
+young man's visionary grasp.
+
+He still went on trying the boy's temper.
+
+"You know there would be nobody ready for you at Raynham. It is
+unfair to disturb the maids."
+
+Richard overrode every objection.
+
+"Well, then, my son," said the baronet, preserving his half-jocular
+air, "I must tell you that it is my wish to have you in town."
+
+"Then you have not been ill at all, sir!" cried Richard, as in his
+despair he seized the whole plot.
+
+"I have been as well as you could have desired me to be," said his
+father.
+
+"Why did they lie to me?" the young man wrathfully exclaimed.
+
+"I think, Richard, you can best answer that," rejoined Sir Austin,
+kindly severe.
+
+Dread of being signalized as the Foolish Young Fellow prevented
+Richard from expostulating further. Sir Austin saw him grinding his
+passion into powder for future explosion, and thought it best to
+leave him for awhile.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+INDICATES THE APPROACHES OF FEVER
+
+
+For three weeks Richard had to remain in town and endure the
+teachings of the System in a new atmosphere. He had to sit and
+listen to men of science who came to renew their intimacy with his
+father, and whom of all men his father wished him to respect and
+study; practically scientific men being, in the baronet's
+estimation, the only minds thoroughly mated and enviable. He had to
+endure an introduction to the Grandisons, and meet the eyes of his
+kind, haunted as he was by the Foolish Young Fellow. The idea that
+he might by any chance be identified with him held the poor youth in
+silent subjection. And it was horrible. For it was a continued
+outrage on the fair image he had in his heart. The notion of the
+world laughing at him because he loved sweet Lucy stung him to
+momentary frenzies, and developed premature misanthropy in his
+spirit. Also the System desired to show him whither young women of
+the parish lead us, and he was dragged about at night-time to see
+the sons and daughters of darkness, after the fashion prescribed to
+Mr. Thompson; how they danced and ogled down the high road to
+perdition. But from this sight possibly the teacher learnt more than
+his pupil, since we find him seriously asking his meditative hours,
+in the Note-book: "Wherefore Wild Oats are only of one gender?" a
+question certainly not suggested to him at Raynham; and
+again--"Whether men might not be attaching too rigid an
+importance?" ... to a subject with a dotted tail apparently, for he
+gives it no other in the Note-book. But, as I apprehend, he had come
+to plead in behalf of women here, and had deduced something from
+positive observation. To Richard the scenes he witnessed were
+strange wild pictures, likely if anything to have increased his
+misanthropy, but for his love.
+
+Certain sweet little notes from Lucy sustained the lover during the
+first two weeks of exile. They ceased; and now Richard fell into
+such despondency that his father in alarm had to take measures to
+hasten their return to Raynham. At the close of the third week Berry
+laid a pair of letters, bearing the Raynham post-mark, on the
+breakfast-table, and, after reading one attentively, the baronet
+asked his son if he was inclined to quit the metropolis.
+
+"For Raynham, sir?" cried Richard, and relapsed, saying, "As you
+will!" aware that he had given a glimpse of the Foolish Young
+Fellow.
+
+Berry accordingly received orders to make arrangements for their
+instant return to Raynham.
+
+The letter Sir Austin lifted his head from to bespeak his son's
+wishes was a composition of the wise youth Adrian's, and ran thus:
+
+     "Benson is doggedly recovering. He requires great indemnities.
+     Happy when a faithful fool is the main sufferer in a household!
+     I quite agree with you that our faithful fool is the best
+     servant of great schemes. Benson is now a piece of history. I
+     tell him that this is indemnity enough, and that the sweet Muse
+     usually insists upon gentlemen being half-flayed before she
+     will condescend to notice them; but Benson, I regret to say,
+     rejects the comfort so fine a reflection should offer, and had
+     rather keep his skin and live opaque. Heroism seems partly a
+     matter of training. Faithful folly is Benson's nature: the rest
+     has been thrust upon him.
+
+     "The young person has resigned the neighbourhood. I had an
+     interview with the fair Papist myself, and also with the man
+     Blaize. They were both sensible, though one swore and the other
+     sighed. She is pretty. I hope she does not paint. I can affirm
+     that her legs are strong, for she walks to Bellingham twice a
+     week to take her Scarlet bath, when, having confessed and been
+     made clean by the Romish unction, she walks back the brisker,
+     of which my Protestant muscular system is yet aware. It was on
+     the road to Bellingham I engaged her. She is well in the matter
+     of hair. Madam Godiva might challenge her, it would be a fair
+     match. Has it never struck you that Woman is nearer the
+     _vegetable_ than Man?--Mr. Blaize intends her for his son--a
+     junction that every lover of fairy mythology must desire to see
+     consummated. Young Tom is heir to all the _agremens_ of the
+     Beast. The maids of Lobourne say (I hear) that he is a very
+     Proculus among them. Possibly the envious men say it for the
+     maids. Beauty does not speak bad grammar--and altogether she is
+     better out of the way."
+
+The other letter was from Lady Blandish, a lady's letter, and said:
+
+     "I have fulfilled your commission to the best of my ability,
+     and heartily sad it has made me. She is indeed very much
+     above her station--pity that it is so! She is almost
+     beautiful--_quite_ beautiful at times, and not in _any way_
+     what you have been led to fancy. The poor child had no story to
+     tell. I have again seen her, and talked with her for an hour as
+     kindly as I could. I could gather nothing more than we know. It
+     is just a woman's history as it invariably commences. Richard
+     is the god of her idolatry. She will renounce him, and
+     sacrifice herself for his sake. Are we so bad? She asked me
+     what she was to do. She would do whatever was imposed upon
+     her--all but pretend to love another, and that she never would,
+     and, I believe, _never will_. You know I am sentimental, and I
+     confess we dropped a _few tears_ together. Her uncle has sent
+     her for the Winter to the institution where it appears she was
+     educated, and where they are very fond of her and want to keep
+     her, which it would be a good thing if they were to do. The man
+     is a good sort of man. She was entrusted to him by her father,
+     and he never interferes with her religion, and is very
+     scrupulous about all that pertains to it, though, as he says,
+     he is a Christian himself. In the Spring (but the poor child
+     does not know this) she is to come back, and be married to his
+     lout of a son. I am _determined_ to prevent that. May I not
+     reckon on your promise to aid me? When you see her, I am sure
+     you will. It would be sacrilege to look on and permit such a
+     thing. You know, they are _cousins_. She asked me, where in the
+     world there was one like Richard? What could I answer? They
+     were your own words, and spoken with a depth of conviction! I
+     hope he is really calm. I shudder to think of him when he
+     comes, and discovers what I have been doing. I hope I have been
+     really doing right! A good deed, you say, never dies; but we
+     cannot always know--I must rely on you. Yes, it is, I should
+     think, easy to suffer martyrdom when one is sure of one's
+     cause! but then one _must_ be sure of it. I have done nothing
+     lately but to repeat to myself that saying of yours, No. 54, C.
+     7, P.S.; and it has consoled me, I cannot say why, except that
+     all wisdom consoles, whether it applies directly or not:
+
+     "'_For this reason so many fall from God, who have attained to
+     Him; that they cling to Him with their Weakness, not with their
+     Strength._'
+
+     "I like to know of what you are thinking when you composed this
+     or that saying--what _suggested_ it. May not one be admitted to
+     inspect the machinery of wisdom? I feel curious to know how
+     thoughts--_real_ thoughts--are born. Not that I hope to win the
+     secret. Here is the beginning of one (but we poor women can
+     never put together even two of the three ideas which you say go
+     to form a thought): 'When a wise man makes a false step, will
+     he not go farther than a fool?' It has just flitted through me.
+
+     "I cannot get on with Gibbon, so wait your return to recommence
+     the readings. I dislike the _sneering essence_ of his writings.
+     I keep referring to his face, until the dislike seems to become
+     personal. How different it is with Wordsworth! And yet I cannot
+     escape from the thought that he is always solemnly thinking of
+     himself (but I _do_ reverence him). But this is curious; Byron
+     was a greater egoist, and yet I do not feel the same with him.
+     He reminds me of a beast of the desert, savage and beautiful;
+     and the former is what one would imagine a superior donkey
+     reclaimed from the heathen to be--a _very_ superior donkey, I
+     mean, with great power of speech and great natural complacency,
+     and whose stubbornness you must admire as part of his mission.
+     The worst is that no one will imagine anything sublime in a
+     superior donkey, so my simile is unfair and false. Is it not
+     strange? I love Wordsworth best, and yet Byron has the greater
+     power over me. How is that?"
+
+("Because," Sir Austin wrote beside the query in pencil, "women are
+cowards, and succumb to Irony and Passion, rather than yield their
+hearts to Excellence and Nature's Inspiration.")
+
+The letter pursued:
+
+     "I have finished Boiardo and have taken up Berni. The latter
+     offends me. I suppose we women do not really care for humour.
+     You are right in saying we have none ourselves, and 'cackle'
+     instead of laugh. It is true (of me, at least) that 'Falstaff
+     is only to us an incorrigible fat man.' I want to know what he
+     _illustrates_. And Don Quixote--what end can be served in
+     making a noble mind ridiculous?--I hear you say--practical! So
+     it is. We are very narrow, I know. But we like wit--practical
+     again! Or in your words (when I really _think_ they generally
+     come to my aid--perhaps it is that it is often all _your
+     thought_); we 'prefer the rapier thrust, to the broad embrace,
+     of Intelligence.'"
+
+He trifled with the letter for some time, re-reading chosen passages
+as he walked about the room, and considering he scarce knew what.
+There are ideas language is too gross for, and shape too arbitrary,
+which come to us and have a definite influence upon us, and yet we
+cannot fasten on the filmy things and make them visible and distinct
+to ourselves, much less to others. Why did he twice throw a look
+into the glass in the act of passing it? He stood for a moment with
+head erect facing it. His eyes for the nonce seemed little to peruse
+his outer features; the grey gathered brows, and the wrinkles much
+action of them had traced over the circles half up his high straight
+forehead; the iron-grey hair that rose over his forehead and fell
+away in the fashion of Richard's plume. His general appearance
+showed the tints of years; but none of their weight, and nothing of
+the dignity of his youth, was gone. It was so far satisfactory, but
+his eyes were wide, as one who looks at his essential self through
+the mask we wear. Perhaps he was speculating as he looked on the
+sort of aspect he presented to the lady's discriminative regard. Of
+her feelings he had not a suspicion. But he knew with what
+extraordinary lucidity women can, when it pleases them, and when
+their feelings are not quite boiling under the noonday sun, seize
+all the sides of a character, and put their fingers on its weak
+point. He was cognizant of the total absence of the humorous in
+himself (the want that most shut him out from his fellows), and
+perhaps the clear-thoughted, intensely self-examining gentleman
+filmily conceived, Me also, in common with the poet, she gazes on as
+one of the superior--grey beasts!
+
+He may have so conceived the case; he was capable of that
+great-mindedness, and could snatch at times very luminous glances at
+the broad reflector which the world of fact lying outside our narrow
+compass holds up for us to see ourselves in when we will. Unhappily,
+the faculty of laughter, which is due to this gift, was denied him;
+and having seen, he, like the companion of friend Balaam, could go
+no farther. For a good wind of laughter had relieved him of much of
+the blight of self-deception, and oddness, and extravagance; had
+given a healthier view of our atmosphere of life; but he had it not.
+
+Journeying back to Bellingham in the train, with the heated brain
+and brilliant eye of his son beside him, Sir Austin tried hard to
+feel infallible, as a man with a System should feel; and because he
+could not do so, after much mental conflict, he descended to
+entertain a personal antagonism to the young woman who had stepped
+in between his experiment and success. He did not think kindly of
+her. Lady Blandish's encomiums of her behaviour and her beauty
+annoyed him. Forgetful that he had in a measure forfeited his rights
+to it, he took the common ground of fathers, and demanded, "Why he
+was not justified in doing all that lay in his power to prevent his
+son from casting himself away upon the first creature with a pretty
+face he encountered?" Deliberating thus, he lost the tenderness he
+should have had for his experiment--the living, burning youth at his
+elbow, and his excessive love for him took a rigorous tone. It
+appeared to him politic, reasonable, and just, that the uncle of
+this young woman, who had so long nursed the prudent scheme of
+marrying her to his son, should not only not be thwarted in his
+object but encouraged and even assisted. At least, not thwarted. Sir
+Austin had no glass before him while these ideas hardened in his
+mind, and he had rather forgotten the letter of Lady Blandish.
+
+Father and son were alone in the railway carriage. Both were too
+preoccupied to speak. As they neared Bellingham, the dark was
+filling the hollows of the country. Over the pine-hills beyond the
+station a last rosy streak lingered across a green sky. Richard eyed
+it while they flew along. It caught him forward: it seemed full of
+the spirit of his love, and brought tears of mournful longing to his
+eyelids. The sad beauty of that one spot in the heavens seemed to
+call out to his soul to swear to his Lucy's truth to him: was like
+the sorrowful visage of his fleur-de-luce, as he called her,
+appealing to him for faith. That tremulous tender way she had of
+half-closing and catching light on the nether-lids, when sometimes
+she looked up in her lover's face--a look so mystic-sweet that it
+had grown to be the fountain of his dreams: he saw it yonder, and
+his blood thrilled.
+
+Know you those wand-like touches of I know not what, before which
+our grosser being melts, and we, much as we hope to be in the
+Awaking, stand etherealized, trembling with new joy? They come but
+rarely; rarely even in love, when we fondly think them revelations.
+Mere sensations they are, doubtless: and we rank for them no higher
+in the spiritual scale than so many translucent glorious _polypi_
+that quiver on the shores, the hues of heaven running through them.
+Yet in the harvest of our days it is something for the animal to
+have had such mere fleshly polypian experiences to look back upon,
+and they give him an horizon--pale seas of luring splendour. One who
+has had them (when they do not bound him) may find the Isles of
+Bliss sooner than another. Sensual faith in the upper glories is
+something. "Let us remember," says THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP, "that
+Nature, though heathenish, reaches at her best to the footstool of
+the Highest. She is not all dust, but a living portion of the
+spheres. In aspiration it is our error to despise her, forgetting
+that through Nature only can we _ascend_. Cherished, trained, and
+purified, she is then partly worthy the divine mate who is to make
+her wholly so. St. Simeon saw the Hog in Nature, and took Nature for
+the Hog."
+
+It was one of these strange bodily exaltations which thrilled the
+young man, he knew not how it was, for sadness and his forebodings
+vanished. The soft wand touched him. At that moment, had Sir Austin
+spoken openly, Richard might have fallen upon his heart. He could
+not. He chose to feel injured on the common ground of fathers, and
+to pursue his System by plotting. Lady Blandish had revived his
+jealousy of the creature who menaced it, and jealousy of a System is
+unreflecting and vindictive as jealousy of woman.
+
+Heath-roots and pines breathed sharp in the cool autumn evening
+about the Bellingham station. Richard stood a moment as he stepped
+from the train, and drew the country air into his lungs with large
+heaves of the chest. Leaving his father to the felicitations of the
+station-master, he went into the Lobourne road to look for his
+faithful Tom, who had received private orders through Berry to be in
+attendance with his young master's mare, Cassandra, and was lurking
+in a plantation of firs unenclosed on the borders of the road, where
+Richard, knowing his retainer's zest for conspiracy too well to seek
+him anywhere but in the part most favoured with shelter and
+concealment, found him furtively whiffing tobacco.
+
+"What news, Tom? Is there an illness?"
+
+Tom sent his undress cap on one side to scratch at dilemma, an old
+agricultural habit to which he was still a slave in moments of
+abstract thought or sudden difficulty.
+
+"No, I don't want the rake, Mr. Richard," he whinnied with a false
+grin, as he beheld his master's eye vacantly following the action.
+
+"Speak out!" he was commanded. "I haven't had a letter for a week!"
+
+Richard learnt the news. He took it with surprising outward calm,
+only getting a little closer to Cassandra's neck, and looking very
+hard at Tom without seeing a speck of him, which had the effect on
+Tom of making him sincerely wish his master would punch his head at
+once rather than fix him in that owl-like way.
+
+"Go on!" said Richard, huskily. "Yes? She's gone! Well?"
+
+Tom was brought to understand he must make the most of trifles, and
+recited how he had heard from a female domestic at Belthorpe of the
+name of Davenport, formerly known to him, that the young lady never
+slept a wink from the hour she knew she was going, but sat up in her
+bed till morning crying most pitifully, though she never complained.
+Hereat the tears unconsciously streamed down Richard's cheeks. Tom
+said he had tried to see her, but Mr. Adrian kept him at work,
+ciphering at a terrible sum--that and nothing else all day! saying,
+it was to please his young master on his return. "Likewise something
+in Lat'n," added Tom. "Nom'tive Mouser!--'nough to make ye mad,
+sir!" he exclaimed with pathos. The wretch had been put to acquire a
+Latin declension.
+
+Tom saw her on the morning she went away, he said: she was very
+sorrowful-looking, and nodded kindly to him as she passed in the fly
+along with young Tom Blaize. "She have got uncommon kind eyes, sir,"
+said Tom, "and cryin' don't spoil them." For which his hand was
+wrenched.
+
+Tom had no more to tell, save that, in rounding the road, the young
+lady had hung out her hand, and seemed to move it forward and back,
+as much as to say, Good-bye, Tom! "And though she couldn't see me,"
+said Tom, "I took off my hat. I did take it so kind of her to think
+of a chap like me." He was at high-pressure sentiment--what with his
+education for a hero and his master's love-stricken state.
+
+"You saw no more of her, Tom?"
+
+"No, sir. That was the last!"
+
+"That was the last you saw of her, Tom?"
+
+"Well, sir, I saw nothin' more."
+
+"And so she went out of sight!"
+
+"Clean gone, that she were, sir."
+
+"Why did they take her away? what have they done with her? where
+have they taken her to?"
+
+These red-hot questionings were addressed to the universal heaven
+rather than to Tom.
+
+"Why didn't she write?" they were resumed. "Why did she leave? She's
+mine. She belongs to me! Who dared take her away? Why did she leave
+without writing?----Tom!"
+
+"Yes, sir," said the well-drilled recruit, dressing himself up to
+the word of command. He expected a variation of the theme from the
+change of tone with which his name had been pronounced, but it was
+again, "Where have they taken her to?" and this was even more
+perplexing to Tom than his hard sum in arithmetic had been. He could
+only draw down the corners of his mouth hard, and glance up queerly.
+
+"She _had_ been crying--you saw that, Tom?"
+
+"No mistake about that, Mr. Richard. Cryin' all night and all day, I
+sh'd say."
+
+"And she was crying when you saw her?"
+
+"She look'd as if she'd just done for a moment, sir."
+
+"But her face was white?"
+
+"White as a sheet."
+
+Richard paused to discover whether his instinct had caught a new
+view from these facts. He was in a cage, always knocking against the
+same bars, fly as he might. Her tears were the stars in his black
+night. He clung to them as golden orbs. Inexplicable as they were,
+they were at least pledges of love.
+
+The hues of sunset had left the West. No light was there but the
+steadfast pale eye of twilight. Thither he was drawn. He mounted
+Cassandra, saying: "Tell them something, Tom. I shan't be home to
+dinner," and rode off toward the forsaken home of light over
+Belthorpe, wherein he saw the wan hand of his Lucy, waving farewell,
+receding as he advanced. His jewel was stolen,--he must gaze upon
+the empty box.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+CRISIS IN THE APPLE-DISEASE
+
+
+Night had come on as Richard entered the old elm-shaded,
+grass-bordered lane leading down from Raynham to Belthorpe. The pale
+eye of twilight was shut. The wind had tossed up the bank of Western
+cloud, which was now flying broad and unlighted across the sky,
+broad and balmy--the charioted South-west at full charge behind his
+panting coursers. As he neared the farm his heart fluttered and
+leapt up. He was sure she must be there. She must have returned. Why
+should she have left for good without writing? He caught suspicion
+by the throat, making it voiceless, if it lived: he silenced reason.
+Her not writing was now a proof that she had returned. He listened
+to nothing but his imperious passion, and murmured sweet words for
+her, as if she were by: tender cherishing epithets of love in the
+nest. She was there--she moved somewhere about like a silver flame
+in the dear old house, doing her sweet household duties. His blood
+began to sing: O happy those within, to see her, and be about her!
+By some extraordinary process he contrived to cast a sort of glory
+round the burly person of Farmer Blaize himself. And oh! to have
+companionship with a seraph one must know a seraph's bliss, and was
+not young Tom to be envied? The smell of late clematis brought on
+the wind enwrapped him, and went to his brain, and threw a light
+over the old red-brick house, for he remembered where it grew, and
+the winter rose-tree, and the jessamine, and the passion-flower: the
+garden in front with the standard roses tended by her hands; the
+long wall to the left striped by the branches of the cherry, the
+peep of a further green garden through the wall, and then the
+orchard, and the fields beyond--the happy circle of her dwelling! it
+flashed before his eyes while he looked on the darkness. And yet it
+was the reverse of hope which kindled this light and inspired the
+momentary calm he experienced: it was despair exaggerating delusion,
+wilfully building up on a groundless basis. "For the tenacity of
+true passion is terrible," says THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP: "it will stand
+against the hosts of heaven, God's great array of Facts, rather than
+surrender its aim, and must be crushed before it will succumb--sent
+to the lowest pit!" He knew she was not there; she was gone. But the
+power of a will strained to madness fought at it, kept it down,
+conjured forth her ghost, and would have it as he dictated. Poor
+youth! the great array of facts was in due order of march.
+
+He had breathed her name many times, and once overloud; almost a cry
+for her escaped him. He had not noticed the opening of a door and
+the noise of a foot along the gravel walk. He was leaning over
+Cassandra's uneasy neck watching the one window intently, when a
+voice addressed him out of the darkness.
+
+"Be that you, young gentleman?--Mr. Fev'rel?"
+
+Richard's trance was broken. "Mr. Blaize!" he said, recognizing the
+farmer's voice.
+
+"Good even'n t'you, sir," returned the farmer. "I knew the mare
+though I didn't know you. Rather bluff to-night it be. Will ye step
+in, Mr. Fev'rel? it's beginnin' to spit--going to be a wildish
+night, I reckon."
+
+Richard dismounted. The farmer called one of his men to hold the
+mare, and ushered the young man in. Once there, Richard's
+conjurations ceased. There was a deadness about the rooms and
+passages that told of her absence. The walls he touched--these were
+the vacant shells of her. He had never been in the house since he
+knew her, and now what strange sweetness, and what pangs!
+
+Young Tom Blaize was in the parlour, squared over the table in
+open-mouthed examination of an ancient book of the fashions for a
+summer month which had elapsed during his mother's minority. Young
+Tom was respectfully studying the aspects of the radiant beauties of
+the polite work. He also was a thrall of woman, newly enrolled, and
+full of wonder.
+
+"What, Tom!" the farmer sang out as soon as he had opened the door;
+"there ye be! at yer Folly agin, are ye? What good'll them fashens
+do to you, I'd like t'know? Come, shut up, and go and see to Mr.
+Fev'rel's mare. He's al'ays at that ther' Folly now. I say there
+never were a better name for a book than that ther' Folly! Talk
+about attitudes!"
+
+The farmer laughed his fat sides into a chair, and motioned his
+visitor to do likewise.
+
+"It's a comfort they're most on 'em females," he pursued, sounding a
+thwack on his knee as he settled himself agreeably in his seat. "It
+don't matter much what they does, except pinchin' in--waspin' it--at
+the waist. Give me nature, I say--woman as she's made! eh, young
+gentleman?"
+
+"You seem very lonely here," said Richard, glancing round, and at
+the ceiling.
+
+"Lonely?" quoth the farmer. "Well, for the matter o' that, we
+be!--jest now, so't happens; I've got my pipe, and Tom've got his
+Folly. He's on one side the table, and I'm on t'other. He gaapes,
+and I gazes. We are a bit lonesome. But there--it's _for_ the best!"
+
+Richard resumed, "I hardly expected to see you to-night, Mr.
+Blaize."
+
+"Y'acted like a man in coming, young gentleman, and I does ye honour
+for it!" said Farmer Blaize with sudden energy and directness.
+
+The thing implied by the farmer's words caused Richard to take a
+quick breath. They looked at each other, and looked away, the farmer
+thrumming on the arm of his chair.
+
+Above the mantel-piece, surrounded by tarnished indifferent
+miniatures of high-collared, well-to-do yeomen of the anterior
+generation, trying their best not to grin, and high-waisted old
+ladies smiling an encouraging smile through plentiful cap-puckers,
+there hung a passably executed half-figure of a naval officer in
+uniform, grasping a telescope under his left arm, who stood forth
+clearly as not of their kith and kin. His eyes were blue, his hair
+light, his bearing that of a man who knows how to carry his head and
+shoulders. The artist, while giving him an epaulette to indicate his
+rank, had also recorded the juvenility which a lieutenant in the
+naval service can retain after arriving at that position, by
+painting him with smooth cheeks and fresh ruddy lips. To this
+portrait Richard's eyes were directed. Farmer Blaize observed it,
+and said--
+
+"Her father, sir!"
+
+Richard moderated his voice to praise the likeness.
+
+"Yes," said the farmer, "pretty well. Next best to havin' _her_,
+though it's a long way off that!"
+
+"An old family, Mr. Blaize--is it not?" Richard asked in as careless
+a tone as he could assume.
+
+"Gentlefolks--what's left of 'em," replied the farmer with an
+equally affected indifference.
+
+"And that's her father?" said Richard, growing bolder to speak of
+her.
+
+"That's her father, young gentleman!"
+
+"Mr. Blaize," Richard turned to face him, and burst out, "where is
+she?"
+
+"Gone, sir! packed off!--Can't have her here now." The farmer
+thrummed a step brisker, and eyed the young man's wild face
+resolutely.
+
+"Mr. Blaize," Richard leaned forward to get closer to him. He was
+stunned, and hardly aware of what he was saying or doing: "Where has
+she gone? Why did she leave?"
+
+"You needn't to ask, sir--ye know," said the farmer, with a side
+shot of his head.
+
+"But _she_ did not--it was not her wish to go?"
+
+"No! I think she likes the place. Mayhap she likes't too well!"
+
+"Why did you send her away to make her unhappy, Mr. Blaize?"
+
+The farmer bluntly denied it was he was the party who made her
+unhappy. "Nobody can't accuse _me_. Tell ye what, sir. I wunt have
+the busybodies set to work about her, and there's all the matter. So
+let you and I come to an understandin'."
+
+A blind inclination to take offence made Richard sit upright. He
+forgot it the next minute, and said humbly: "Am I the cause of her
+going?"
+
+"Well!" returned the farmer, "to speak straight--ye be!"
+
+"What can I do, Mr. Blaize, that she may come back again?" the young
+hypocrite asked.
+
+"Now," said the farmer, "you're coming to business. Glad to hear ye
+talk in that sensible way, Mr. Fev'rel. You may guess I wants her
+bad enough. The house ain't itself now she's away, and I ain't
+myself. Well, sir! This ye can do. If you gives me your promise not
+to meddle with her at all--I can't mak' out how you come to be
+acquainted; not to try to get her to be meetin' you--and if you'd a
+seen her when she left, you would--when did ye meet?--last grass,
+wasn't it?--your word as a gentleman not to be writing letters, and
+spyin' after her--I'll have her back at once. Back she shall come!"
+
+"Give her up!" cried Richard.
+
+"Ay, that's it!" said the farmer. "Give her up."
+
+The young man checked the annihilation of time that was on his
+mouth.
+
+"You sent her away to protect her from me, then?" he said savagely.
+
+"That's not quite it, but that'll do," rejoined the farmer.
+
+"Do you think I shall harm her, sir?"
+
+"People seem to think she'll harm you, young gentleman," the farmer
+said with some irony.
+
+"Harm _me_--she? What people?"
+
+"People pretty intimate with you, sir."
+
+"What people? Who spoke of us?" Richard began to scent a plot, and
+would not be balked.
+
+"Well, sir, look here," said the farmer. "It ain't no secret, and if
+it be, I don't see why I'm to keep it. It appears your education's
+peculiar!" The farmer drawled out the word as if he were describing
+the figure of a snake. "You ain't to be as other young gentlemen.
+All the better! You're a fine bold young gentleman, and your
+father's a right to be proud of ye. Well, sir--I'm sure I thank him
+for't--he comes to hear of you and Luce, and of course he don't want
+nothin' o' that--more do I. I meets him there! What's more I won't
+have nothin' of it. She be my gal. She were left to my protection.
+And she's a lady, sir. Let me tell ye, ye won't find many on 'em so
+well looked to as she be--my Luce! Well, Mr. Fev'rel, it's you, or
+it's her--one of ye must be out o' the way. So we're told. And
+Luce--I do believe she's just as anxious about yer education as yer
+father--she says she'll go, and wouldn't write, and'd break it off
+for the sake o' your education. And she've kep' her word, haven't
+she?--She's a true'n. What she says she'll do!--True blue she be, my
+Luce! So now, sir, you do the same, and I'll thank ye."
+
+Any one who has tossed a sheet of paper into the fire, and seen it
+gradually brown with heat, and strike to flame, may conceive the
+mind of the lover as he listened to this speech.
+
+His anger did not evaporate in words, but condensed and sank deep.
+"Mr. Blaize," he said, "this is very kind of the people you allude
+to, but I am of an age now to think and act for myself--I love her,
+sir!" His whole countenance changed, and the muscles of his face
+quivered.
+
+"Well!" said the farmer, appeasingly, "we all do at your
+age--somebody or other. It's natural!"
+
+"I love her!" the young man thundered afresh, too much possessed by
+his passion to have a sense of shame in the confession. "Farmer!"
+his voice fell to supplication, "will you bring her back?"
+
+Farmer Blaize made a queer face. He asked--what for? and where was
+the promise required?--But was not the lover's argument conclusive?
+He said he loved her! and he could not see why her uncle should not
+in consequence immediately send for her, that they might be
+together. All very well, quoth the farmer, but what's to come of
+it?--What was to come of it? Why, love, and more love! And a bit too
+much! the farmer added grimly.
+
+"Then you refuse me, farmer," said Richard. "I must look to you for
+keeping her away from me, not to--to--these people. You will not
+have her back, though I tell you I love her better than my life?"
+
+Farmer Blaize now had to answer him plainly, he had a reason and an
+objection of his own. And it was, that her character was at stake,
+and God knew whether she herself might not be in danger. He spoke
+with a kindly candour, not without dignity. He complimented Richard
+personally, but young people were young people; baronets' sons were
+not in the habit of marrying farmers' nieces.
+
+At first the son of a System did not comprehend him. When he did, he
+said: "Farmer! if I give you my word of honour, as I hope for
+heaven, to marry her when I am of age, will you have her back?"
+
+He was so fervid that, to quiet him, the farmer only shook his head
+doubtfully at the bars of the grate, and let his chest fall slowly.
+Richard caught what seemed to him a glimpse of encouragement in
+these signs, and observed: "It's not because you object to me, Mr.
+Blaize?"
+
+The farmer signified it was not that.
+
+"It's because my father is against me," Richard went on, and
+undertook to show that love was so sacred a matter that no father
+could entirely and for ever resist his son's inclinations. Argument
+being a cool field where the farmer could meet and match him, the
+young man got on the tramroad of his passion, and went ahead. He
+drew pictures of Lucy, of her truth, and his own. He took leaps from
+life to death, from death to life, mixing imprecations and prayers
+in a torrent. Perhaps he did move the stolid old Englishman a
+little, he was so vehement, and made so visible a sacrifice of his
+pride.
+
+Farmer Blaize tried to pacify him, but it was useless. His jewel he
+must have.
+
+The farmer stretched out his hand for the pipe that allayeth
+botheration. "May smoke heer now," he said. "Not when--somebody's
+present. Smoke in the kitchen then. Don't mind smell?"
+
+Richard nodded, and watched the operations while the farmer filled,
+and lighted, and began to puff, as if his fate hung on them.
+
+"Who'd a' thought, when you sat over there once, of its comin' to
+this?" ejaculated the farmer, drawing ease and reflection from
+tobacco. "You didn't think much of her that day, young gentleman! I
+introduced ye. Well! things comes about. Can't you wait till she
+returns in due course, now?"
+
+This suggestion, the work of the pipe, did but bring on him another
+torrent.
+
+"It's queer," said the farmer, putting the mouth of the pipe to his
+wrinkled-up temples.
+
+Richard waited for him, and then he laid down the pipe altogether,
+as no aid in perplexity, and said, after leaning his arm on the
+table and staring at Richard an instant:
+
+"Look, young gentleman! My word's gone. I've spoke it. I've given
+'em the 'surance she shan't be back till the Spring, and then I'll
+have her, and then--well! I do hope, for more reasons than one,
+ye'll both be wiser--I've got my own notions about her. But I an't
+the man to force a gal to marry 'gainst her inclines. Depend upon it
+I'm not your enemy, Mr. Fev'rel. You're jest the one to mak' a young
+gal proud. So wait,--and see. That's my 'dvice. Jest tak' and wait.
+I've no more to say."
+
+Richard's impetuosity had made him really afraid of speaking his
+notions concerning the projected felicity of young Tom, if indeed
+they were serious.
+
+The farmer repeated that he had no more to say; and Richard, with
+"Wait till the Spring! Wait till the Spring!" dinning despair in his
+ears, stood up to depart. Farmer Blaize shook his slack hand in a
+friendly way, and called out at the door for young Tom, who,
+dreading allusions to his Folly, did not appear. A maid rushed by
+Richard in the passage, and slipped something into his grasp, which
+fixed on it without further consciousness than that of touch. The
+mare was led forth by the Bantam. A light rain was falling down
+strong warm gusts, and the trees were noisy in the night. Farmer
+Blaize requested Richard at the gate to give him his hand, and say
+all was well. He liked the young man for his earnestness and honest
+outspeaking. Richard could not say all was well, but he gave his
+hand, and knitted it to the farmer's in a sharp squeeze, when he got
+upon Cassandra, and rode into the tumult.
+
+A calm, clear dawn succeeded the roaring West, and threw its glowing
+grey image on the waters of the Abbey-lake. Before sunrise Tom
+Bakewell was abroad, and met the missing youth, his master, jogging
+Cassandra leisurely along the Lobourne park-road, a sorry couple to
+look at. Cassandra's flanks were caked with mud, her head drooped:
+all that was in her had been taken out by that wild night. On what
+heaths and heavy fallows had she not spent her noble strength,
+recklessly fretting through the darkness!
+
+"Take the mare," said Richard, dismounting and patting her between
+the eyes. "She's done up, poor old girl! Look to her, Tom, and then
+come to me in my room."
+
+Tom asked no questions.
+
+Three days would bring the anniversary of Richard's birth, and
+though Tom was close, the condition of the mare, and the young
+gentleman's strange freak in riding her out all night becoming
+known, prepared everybody at Raynham for the usual bad-luck
+birthday, the prophets of which were full of sad gratification. Sir
+Austin had an unpleasant office to require of his son; no other than
+that of humbly begging Benson's pardon, and washing out the undue
+blood he had spilt in taking his Pound of Flesh. Heavy Benson was
+told to anticipate the demand for pardon, and practised in his mind
+the most melancholy Christian deportment he could assume on the
+occasion. But while his son was in this state, Sir Austin considered
+that he would hardly be brought to see the virtues of the act, and
+did not make the requisition of him, and heavy Benson remained drawn
+up solemnly expectant at doorways, and at the foot of the staircase,
+a Saurian Caryatid, wherever he could get a step in advance of the
+young man, while Richard heedlessly passed him, as he passed
+everybody else, his head bent to the ground, and his legs bearing
+him like random instruments of whose service he was unconscious. It
+was a shock to Benson's implicit belief in his patron; and he was
+not consoled by the philosophic explanation, "That Good in a strong
+many-compounded nature is of slower growth than any other mortal
+thing, and must not be forced." Damnatory doctrines best pleased
+Benson. He was ready to pardon, as a Christian should, but he did
+want his enemy before him on his knees. And now, though the Saurian
+Eye saw more than all the other eyes in the house, and saw that
+there was matter in hand between Tom and his master to breed
+exceeding discomposure to the System, Benson, as he had not received
+his indemnity, and did not wish to encounter fresh perils for
+nothing, held his peace.
+
+Sir Austin partly divined what was going on in the breast of his
+son, without conceiving the depths of distrust his son cherished or
+quite measuring the intensity of the passion that consumed him. He
+was very kind and tender with him. Like a cunning physician who has,
+nevertheless, overlooked the change in the disease super-induced by
+one false dose, he meditated his prescriptions carefully and
+confidently, sure that he knew the case, and was a match for it. He
+decreed that Richard's erratic behaviour should pass unnoticed. Two
+days before the birthday, he asked him whether he would object to
+having company? To which Richard said: "Have whom you will, sir."
+The preparation for festivity commenced accordingly.
+
+On the birthday eve he dined with the rest. Lady Blandish was there,
+and sat penitently at his right. Hippias prognosticated certain
+indigestion for himself on the morrow. The Eighteenth Century
+wondered whether she should live to see another birthday. Adrian
+drank the two-years' distant term of his tutorship, and Algernon
+went over the list of the Lobourne men who would cope with Bursley
+on the morrow. Sir Austin gave ear and a word to all, keeping his
+mental eye for his son. To please Lady Blandish also, Adrian
+ventured to make trifling jokes about London's Mrs. Grandison; jokes
+delicately not decent, but so delicately so, that it was not decent
+to perceive it.
+
+After dinner Richard left them. Nothing more than commonly peculiar
+was observed about him, beyond the excessive glitter of his eyes,
+but the baronet said, "Yes, yes! that will pass." He and Adrian, and
+Lady Blandish, took tea in the library, and sat till a late hour
+discussing casuistries relating mostly to the Apple-disease.
+Converse very amusing to the wise youth, who could suggest to the
+two chaste minds situations of the shadiest character, with the air
+of a seeker after truth, and lead them, unsuspecting, where they
+dared not look about them. The Aphorist had elated the heart of his
+constant fair worshipper with a newly rounded if not newly conceived
+sentence, when they became aware that they were four. Heavy Benson
+stood among them. He said he had knocked, but received no answer.
+There was, however, a vestige of surprise and dissatisfaction on his
+face beholding Adrian of the company, which had not quite worn away,
+and gave place, when it did vanish, to an aspect of flabby severity.
+
+"Well, Benson? well?" said the baronet.
+
+The unmoving man replied: "If you please, Sir Austin--Mr. Richard!"
+
+"Well!"
+
+"He's out!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"With Bakewell!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"And a carpet-bag!"
+
+The carpet-bag might be supposed to contain that funny thing called
+a young hero's romance in the making.
+
+Out Richard was, and with a carpet-bag, which Tom Bakewell carried.
+He was on the road to Bellingham, under heavy rain, hasting like an
+escaped captive, wild with joy, while Tom shook his skin, and
+grunted at his discomforts. The mail train was to be caught at
+Bellingham. He knew where to find her now, through the intervention
+of Miss Davenport, and thither he was flying, an arrow loosed from
+the bow: thither, in spite of fathers and friends and plotters, to
+claim her, and take her, and stand with her against the world.
+
+They were both thoroughly wet when they entered Bellingham, and
+Tom's visions were of hot drinks. He hinted the necessity for inward
+consolation to his master, who could answer nothing but "Tom! Tom! I
+shall see her to-morrow!" It was bad--travelling in the wet, Tom
+hinted again, to provoke the same insane outcry, and have his arm
+seized and furiously shaken into the bargain. Passing the principal
+inn of the place, Tom spoke plainly for brandy.
+
+"No!" cried Richard, "there's not a moment to be lost!" and as he
+said it, he reeled, and fell against Tom, muttering indistinctly of
+faintness, and that there was no time to lose. Tom lifted him in his
+arms, and got admission to the inn. Brandy, the country's specific,
+was advised by host and hostess, and forced into his mouth, reviving
+him sufficiently to cry out, "Tom! the bell's ringing: we shall be
+late," after which he fell back insensible on the sofa where they
+had stretched him. Excitement of blood and brain had done its work
+upon him. The youth suffered them to undress him and put him to bed,
+and there he lay, forgetful even of love; a drowned weed borne
+onward by the tide of the hours. There his father found him.
+
+Was the Scientific Humanist remorseful? He had looked forward to
+such a crisis as that point in the disease his son was the victim
+of, when the body would fail and give the spirit calm to conquer the
+malady, knowing very well that the seeds of the evil were not of the
+spirit. Moreover, to see him and have him was a repose after the
+alarm Benson had sounded. "Mark!" he said to Lady Blandish, "when he
+recovers he will not care for her."
+
+The lady had accompanied him to the Bellingham inn on first hearing
+of Richard's seizure.
+
+"What an iron man you can be," she exclaimed, smothering her
+intuitions. She was for giving the boy his bauble; promising it him,
+at least, if he would only get well and be the bright flower of
+promise he once was.
+
+"Can you look on him," she pleaded, "can you look on him and
+persevere?"
+
+It was a hard sight for this man who loved his son so deeply. The
+youth lay in his strange bed, straight and motionless, with fever on
+his cheeks, and altered eyes.
+
+Old Dr. Clifford of Lobourne was the medical attendant, who, with
+head-shaking, and gathering of lips, and reminiscences of ancient
+arguments, guaranteed to do all that leech could do in the matter.
+The old doctor did admit that Richard's constitution was admirable,
+and answered to his prescriptions like a piano to the musician.
+"But," he said at a family consultation, for Sir Austin had told him
+how it stood with the young man, "drugs are not much in cases of
+this sort. Change! That's what's wanted, and as soon as may be.
+Distraction! He ought to see the world, and know what he is made of.
+It's no use my talking, I know," added the doctor.
+
+"On the contrary," said Sir Austin, "I am quite of your persuasion.
+And the world he shall see--now."
+
+"We have dipped him in Styx, you know, doctor," Adrian remarked.
+
+"But, doctor," said Lady Blandish, "have you known a case of this
+sort before?"
+
+"Never, my lady," said the doctor, "they're not common in these
+parts. Country people are tolerably healthy-minded."
+
+"But people--and country people--have died for love, doctor?"
+
+The doctor had not met any of them.
+
+"Men, or women?" inquired the baronet.
+
+Lady Blandish believed mostly women.
+
+"Ask the doctor whether they were healthy-minded women," said the
+baronet. "No! you are both looking at the wrong end. Between a
+highly-cultured being, and an emotionless animal, there is all the
+difference in the world. But of the two, the doctor is nearer the
+truth. The healthy nature is pretty safe. If he allowed for
+organization he would be right altogether. To feel, but not to feel
+to excess, that is the problem."
+
+    "If I can't have the one I chose,
+    To some fresh maid I will propose,"
+
+Adrian hummed a country ballad.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+OF THE SPRING PRIMROSE AND THE AUTUMNAL
+
+
+When the young Experiment again knew the hours that rolled him
+onward, he was in his own room at Raynham. Nothing had changed: only
+a strong fist had knocked him down and stunned him, and he opened
+his eyes to a grey world: he had forgotten what he lived for. He was
+weak and thin, and with a pale memory of things. His functions were
+the same, everything surrounding him was the same: he looked upon
+the old blue hills, the far-lying fallows, the river, and the woods:
+he knew them, they seemed to have lost recollection of him. Nor
+could he find in familiar human faces the secret of intimacy of
+heretofore. They were the same faces: they nodded and smiled to him.
+What was lost he could not tell. Something had been knocked out of
+him! He was sensible of his father's sweetness of manner, and he was
+grieved that he could not reply to it, for every sense of shame and
+reproach had strangely gone. He felt very useless. In place of the
+fiery love for one, he now bore about a cold charity to all.
+
+Thus in the heart of the young man died the Spring Primrose, and
+while it died another heart was pushing forth the Primrose of
+Autumn.
+
+The wonderful change in Richard, and the wisdom of her admirer, now
+positively proved, were exciting matters to Lady Blandish. She was
+rebuked for certain little rebellious fancies concerning him that
+had come across her enslaved mind from time to time. For was he not
+almost a prophet? It distressed the sentimental lady that a love
+like Richard's could pass off in mere smoke, and words such as she
+had heard him speak in Abbey-wood resolve to emptiness. Nay, it
+humiliated her personally, and the baronet's shrewd prognostication
+humiliated her. For how should he know, and dare to say, that love
+was a thing of the dust that could be trodden out under the heel of
+science? But he had said so, and he had proved himself right. She
+heard with wonderment that Richard of his own accord had spoken to
+his father of the folly he had been guilty of, and had begged his
+pardon. The baronet told her this, adding that the youth had done it
+in a cold unwavering way, without a movement of his features: had
+evidently done it to throw off the burden of the duty he had
+conceived. He had thought himself bound to acknowledge that he had
+been the Foolish Young Fellow, wishing, possibly, to abjure the fact
+by an act of penance. He had also given satisfaction to Benson, and
+was become a renovated peaceful spirit, whose main object appeared
+to be to get up his physical strength by exercise and no expenditure
+of speech.
+
+In her company he was composed and courteous; even when they were
+alone together, he did not exhibit a trace of melancholy. Sober he
+seemed, as one who has recovered from a drunkenness and has
+determined to drink no more. The idea struck her that he might be
+playing a part, but Tom Bakewell, in a private conversation they
+had, informed her that he had received an order from his young
+master, one day while boxing with him, not to mention the young
+lady's name to him as long as he lived; and Tom could only suppose
+that she had offended him. Theoretically wise Lady Blandish had
+always thought the baronet; she was unprepared to find him thus
+practically sagacious. She fell many degrees; she wanted something
+to cling to; so she clung to the man who struck her low. Love, then,
+was earthly; its depth could be probed by science! A man lived who
+could measure it from end to end; foretell its term; handle the
+young cherub as were he a shot owl! We who have flown into
+cousinship with the empyrean, and disported among immortal hosts,
+our base birth as a child of Time is made bare to us!--our wings are
+cut! Oh, then, if science is this victorious enemy of love, let us
+love science! was the logic of the lady's heart; and secretly
+cherishing the assurance that she should confute him yet, and prove
+him utterly wrong, she gave him the fruits of present success, as it
+is a habit of women to do; involuntarily partly. The fires took hold
+of her. She felt soft emotions such as a girl feels, and they
+flattered her. It was like youth coming back. Pure women have a
+second youth. The Autumn primrose flourished.
+
+We are advised by THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP that--
+
+"The ways of women, which are Involution, and their practices, which
+are Opposition, are generally best hit upon by guess work, and a
+bold word;"--it being impossible to track them and hunt them down in
+the ordinary style.
+
+So that we may not ourselves become involved and opposed, let us
+each of us venture a guess and say a bold word as to how it came
+that the lady, who trusted love to be eternal, grovelled to him that
+shattered her tender faith, and loved him.
+
+Hitherto it had been simply a sentimental dalliance, and gossips had
+maligned the lady. Just when the gossips grew tired of their
+slander, and inclined to look upon her charitably, she set about to
+deserve every word they had said of her; which may instruct us, if
+you please, that gossips have only to persist in lying to be crowned
+with verity, or that one has only to endure evil mouths for a period
+to gain impunity. She was always at the Abbey now. She was much
+closeted with the baronet. It seemed to be understood that she had
+taken Mrs. Doria's place. Benson in his misogynic soul perceived
+that she was taking Lady Feverel's: but any report circulated by
+Benson was sure to meet discredit, and drew the gossips upon
+himself; which made his meditations tragic. No sooner was one woman
+defeated than another took the field! The object of the System was
+no sooner safe than its great author was in danger!
+
+"I can't think what has come to Benson," he said to Adrian.
+
+"He seems to have received a fresh legacy of several pounds of
+lead," returned the wise youth, and imitating Dr. Clifford's manner.
+"Change is what he wants! distraction! send him to Wales for a
+month, sir, and let Richard go with him. The two victims of woman
+may do each other good."
+
+"Unfortunately I can't do without him," said the baronet.
+
+"Then we must continue to have him on our shoulders all day, and on
+our chests all night!" Adrian ejaculated.
+
+"I think while he preserves this aspect we won't have him at the
+dinner-table," said the baronet.
+
+Adrian thought that would be a relief to their digestions; and
+added: "You know, sir, what he says?"
+
+Receiving a negative, Adrian delicately explained to him that
+Benson's excessive ponderosity of demeanour was caused by anxiety
+for the safety of his master.
+
+"You must pardon a faithful fool, sir," he continued, for the
+baronet became red, and exclaimed:
+
+"His stupidity is past belief! I have absolutely to bolt my
+study-door against him."
+
+Adrian at once beheld a charming scene in the interior of the study,
+not unlike one that Benson had visually witnessed. For, like a wary
+prophet, Benson, that he might have warrant for what he foretold of
+the future, had a care to spy upon the present: warned haply by THE
+PILGRIM'S SCRIP, of which he was a diligent reader, and which says,
+rather emphatically: "Could we see Time's full face, we were wise of
+him." Now to see Time's full face, it is sometimes necessary to look
+through keyholes, the veteran having a trick of smiling peace to you
+on one cheek and grimacing confusion on the other behind the
+curtain. Decency and a sense of honour restrain most of us from
+being thus wise and miserable for ever. Benson's excuse was that he
+believed in his master, who was menaced. And moreover, notwithstanding
+his previous tribulation, to spy upon Cupid was sweet to him. So he
+peeped, and he saw a sight. He saw Time's full face; or, in other
+words, he saw the wiles of woman and the weakness of man: which is
+our history, as Benson would have written it, and a great many poets
+and philosophers have written it.
+
+Yet it was but the plucking of the Autumn primrose that Benson had
+seen: a somewhat different operation from the plucking of the Spring
+one: very innocent! Our staid elderly sister has paler blood, and
+has, or thinks she has, a reason or two about the roots. She is not
+all instinct. "For this high cause, and for that I know men, and
+know him to be the flower of men, I give myself to him!" She makes
+that lofty inward exclamation while the hand is detaching her from
+the roots. Even so strong a self-justification she requires. She has
+not that blind glory in excess which her younger sister can gild the
+longest leap with. And if, moth-like, she desires the star, she is
+nervously cautious of candles. Hence her circles about the dangerous
+human flame are wide and shy. She must be drawn nearer and nearer by
+a fresh _reason_. She loves to sentimentalize. Lady Blandish had
+been sentimentalizing for ten years. She would have preferred to
+pursue the game. The dark-eyed dame was pleased with her smooth life
+and the soft excitement that did not ruffle it. Not willingly did
+she let herself be won.
+
+"Sentimentalists," says THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP, "are they who seek to
+enjoy without incurring the Immense Debtorship for a thing done."
+
+"It is," the writer says of Sentimentalism elsewhere, "a happy
+pastime and an important science to the timid, the idle, and the
+heartless; but a damning one to them who have anything to forfeit."
+
+However, one who could set down the dying for love, as a
+sentimentalism, can hardly be accepted as a clear authority.
+Assuredly he was not one to avoid the incurring of the immense
+debtorship in any way: but he was a bondsman still to the woman who
+had forsaken him, and a spoken word would have made it seem his duty
+to face that public scandal which was the last evil to him. What had
+so horrified the virtuous Benson, Richard had already beheld in
+Daphne's Bower; a simple kissing of the fair white hand! Doubtless
+the keyhole somehow added to Benson's horror. The two similar
+performances, so very innocent, had wondrous opposite consequences.
+The first kindled Richard to adore Woman; the second destroyed
+Benson's faith in Man. But Lady Blandish knew the difference between
+the two. She understood why the baronet did not speak; excused, and
+respected him for it. She was content, since she must love, to love
+humbly, and she had, besides, her pity for his sorrows to comfort
+her. A hundred fresh reasons for loving him arose and multiplied
+every day. He read to her the secret book in his own handwriting,
+composed for Richard's Marriage Guide: containing Advice and
+Directions to a Young Husband, full of the most tender wisdom and
+delicacy; so she thought; nay, not wanting in poetry, though neither
+rhymed nor measured. He expounded to her the distinctive character
+of the divers ages of love, giving the palm to the flower she put
+forth, over that of Spring, or the Summer rose. And while they sat
+and talked, "My wound has healed," he said. "How?" she asked. "At
+the fountain of your eyes," he replied, and drew the joy of new life
+from her blushes, without incurring further debtorship for a thing
+done.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+IN WHICH THE HERO TAKES A STEP
+
+
+Let it be some apology for the damage caused by the careering hero,
+and a consolation to the quiet wretches, dragged along with him at
+his chariot-wheels, that he is generally the last to know when he
+has made an actual start; such a mere creature is he, like the rest
+of us, albeit the head of our fates. By this you perceive the true
+hero, whether he be a prince or a pot-boy, that he does not plot;
+Fortune does all for him. He may be compared to one to whom, in an
+electric circle, it is given to carry the _battery_. We caper and
+grimace at his will; yet not his the will, not his the power. 'Tis
+all Fortune's, whose puppet he is. She deals her dispensations
+through him. Yea, though our capers be never so comical, he laughs
+not. Intent upon his own business, the true hero asks little
+services of us here and there; thinks it quite natural that they
+should be acceded to, and sees nothing ridiculous in the lamentable
+contortions we must go through to fulfil them. Probably he is the
+elect of Fortune, because of that notable faculty of being intent
+upon his own business: "Which is," says THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP, "with
+men to be valued equal to that force which in water _makes a
+stream_." This prelude was necessary to the present chapter of
+Richard's history.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It happened that in the turn of the year, and while old earth was
+busy with her flowers, the fresh wind blew, the little bird sang,
+and Hippias Feverel, the Dyspepsy, amazed, felt the Spring move
+within him. He communicated his delightful new sensations to the
+baronet, his brother, whose constant exclamation with regard to him,
+was: "Poor Hippias! All his machinery is bare!" and had no hope that
+he would ever be in a condition to defend it from view. Nevertheless
+Hippias had that hope, and so he told his brother, making great
+exposure of his machinery to effect the explanation. He spoke of all
+his physical experiences exultingly, and with wonder. The
+achievement of common efforts, not usually blazoned, he celebrated
+as triumphs, and, of course, had Adrian on his back very quickly.
+But he could bear him, or anything, now. It was such ineffable
+relief to find himself looking out upon the world of mortals instead
+of into the black phantasmal abysses of his own complicated
+frightful structure. "My mind doesn't so much seem to haunt itself,
+now," said Hippias, nodding shortly and peering out of intense
+puckers to convey a glimpse of what hellish sufferings his had been:
+"I feel as if I had come above-ground."
+
+A poor Dyspepsy may talk as he will, but he is the one who never
+gets sympathy, or experiences compassion: and it is he whose
+groaning petitions for charity do at last rout that Christian
+virtue. Lady Blandish, a charitable soul, could not listen to
+Hippias, though she had a heart for little mice and flies, and Sir
+Austin had also small patience with his brother's gleam of health,
+which was just enough to make his disease visible. He remembered his
+early follies and excesses, and bent his ear to him as one man does
+to another who complains of having to pay a debt legally incurred.
+
+"I think," said Adrian, seeing how the communications of Hippias
+were received, "that when our Nemesis takes lodgings in the
+stomach, it's best to act the Spartan, smile hard, and be silent."
+
+Richard alone was decently kind to Hippias; whether from opposition, or
+real affection, could not be said, as the young man was mysterious. He
+advised his uncle to take exercise, walked with him, cultivated cheerful
+impressions in him, and pointed out innocent pursuits. He made Hippias
+visit with him some of the poor old folk of the village, who bewailed
+the loss of his cousin Austin Wentworth, and did his best to waken him
+up, and give the outer world a stronger hold on him. He succeeded in
+nothing but in winning his uncle's gratitude. The season bloomed scarce
+longer than a week for Hippias, and then began to languish. The poor
+Dyspepsy's eager grasp at beatification relaxed: he went underground
+again. He announced that he felt "spongy things"--one of the more
+constant throes of his malady. His bitter face recurred: he chewed the
+cud of horrid hallucinations. He told Richard he must give up going
+about with him: people telling of their ailments made him so
+uncomfortable--the birds were so noisy, pairing--the rude bare soil
+sickened him.
+
+Richard treated him with a gravity equal to his father's. He asked
+what the doctors said.
+
+"Oh! the doctors!" cried Hippias with vehement scepticism. "No man
+of sense believes in medicine for chronic disorder. Do you happen to
+have heard of any new remedy then, Richard? No? They advertise a
+great many cures for indigestion, I assure you, my dear boy. I
+wonder whether one can rely upon the authenticity of those
+signatures? I see no reason why there should be _no_ cure for such a
+disease?--Eh? And it's just one of the things a quack, as they call
+them, would hit upon sooner than one who is in the beaten track. Do
+you know, Richard, my dear boy, I've often thought that if we could
+by any means appropriate to our use some of the extraordinary
+digestive power that a boa constrictor has in his gastric juices,
+there is really no manner of reason why we should not comfortably
+dispose of as much of an ox as our stomachs will hold, and one might
+eat French dishes without the wretchedness of thinking what's to
+follow. And this makes me think that those fellows _may_, after all,
+have got some truth in them: some secret that, of course, they
+require to be paid for. We distrust each other in this world too
+much, Richard. I've felt inclined once or twice--but it's
+absurd!--If it only alleviated a few of my sufferings _I_ should be
+satisfied. I've no hesitation in saying that I should be quite
+satisfied if it only did away with one or two, and left me free to
+eat and drink as other people do. Not that I mean to try them. It's
+only a fancy--Eh? What a thing health is, my dear boy! Ah! if I were
+like you! I was in love once!"
+
+"Were you!" said Richard, coolly regarding him.
+
+"I've forgotten what I felt!" Hippias sighed. "You've very much
+improved, my dear boy."
+
+"So people say," quoth Richard.
+
+Hippias looked at him anxiously: "If I go to town and get the
+doctor's opinion, about trying a new course--Eh, Richard? will you
+come with me? I should like your company. We could see London
+together, you know. Enjoy ourselves," and Hippias rubbed his hands.
+
+Richard smiled at the feeble glimmer of enjoyment promised by his
+uncle's eyes, and said he thought it better they should stay where
+they were--an answer that might mean anything. Hippias immediately
+became possessed by the beguiling project. He went to the baronet,
+and put the matter before him, instancing doctors as the object of
+his journey, not quacks, of course; and requesting leave to take
+Richard. Sir Austin was getting uneasy about his son's manner. It
+was not natural. His heart seemed to be frozen: he had no
+confidences: he appeared to have no ambition--to have lost the
+virtues of youth with the poison that had passed out of him. He was
+disposed to try what effect a little travelling might have on him,
+and had himself once or twice hinted to Richard that it would be
+good for him to move about, the young man quietly replying that he
+did not wish to quit Raynham at all, which was too strict a
+fulfilment of his father's original views in educating him there
+entirely. On the day that Hippias made his proposal, Adrian,
+seconded by Lady Blandish, also made one. The sweet Spring season
+stirred in Adrian as well as in others: not to pastoral measures: to
+the joys of the operatic world and bravura glories. He also
+suggested that it would be advisable to carry Richard to town for a
+term, and let him know his position, and some freedom. Sir Austin
+weighed the two proposals. He was pretty certain that Richard's
+passion was consumed, and that the youth was now only under the
+burden of its ashes. He had found against his heart, at the
+Bellingham inn: a great lock of golden hair. He had taken it, and
+the lover, after feeling about for it with faint hands, never asked
+for it. This precious lock (Miss Davenport had thrust it into his
+hand at Belthorpe as Lucy's last gift), what sighs and tears it had
+weathered! The baronet laid it in Richard's sight one day, and
+beheld him take it up, turn it over, and drop it down again calmly,
+as if he were handling any common curiosity. It pacified him on that
+score. The young man's love was dead. Dr. Clifford said rightly: he
+wanted distractions. The baronet determined that Richard should go.
+Hippias and Adrian then pressed their several suits as to which
+should have him. Hippias, when he could forget himself, did not lack
+sense. He observed that Adrian was not at present a proper companion
+for Richard, and would teach him to look on life from the false
+point.
+
+"You don't understand a young philosopher," said the baronet.
+
+"A young philosopher's an old fool!" returned Hippias, not thinking
+that his growl had begotten a phrase.
+
+His brother smiled with gratification, and applauded him loudly:
+"Excellent! worthy of your best days! You're wrong, though, in
+applying it to Adrian. He has never been precocious. All he has done
+has been to bring sound common sense to bear upon what he hears and
+sees. I think, however," the baronet added, "he may want faith in
+the better qualities of men." And this reflection inclined him not
+to let his son be alone with Adrian. He gave Richard his choice, who
+saw which way his father's wishes tended, and decided so to please
+him. Naturally it annoyed Adrian extremely. He said to his chief:
+
+"I suppose you know what you are doing, sir. I don't see that we
+derive any advantage from the family name being made notorious for
+twenty years of obscene suffering, and becoming a byword for our
+constitutional tendency to stomachic distention before we
+fortunately encountered Quackem's Pill. My uncle's tortures have
+been huge, but I would rather society were not intimate with them
+under their several headings." Adrian enumerated some of the most
+abhorrent. "You know him, sir. If he conceives a duty, he will do it
+in the face of every decency--all the more obstinate because the
+conception is rare. If he feels a little brisk the morning after the
+pill, he sends the letter that makes us famous! We go down to
+posterity with heightened characteristics, to say nothing of a
+contemporary celebrity nothing less than our being turned inside-out
+to the rabble. I confess I don't desire to have my machinery made
+bare to them."
+
+Sir Austin assured the wise youth that Hippias had arranged to go to
+Dr. Bairam. He softened Adrian's chagrin by telling him that in
+about two weeks they would follow to London: hinting also at a
+prospective Summer campaign. The day was fixed for Richard to
+depart, and the day came. Madame the Eighteenth Century called him
+to her chamber and put into his hand a fifty-pound note, as her
+contribution toward his pocket-expenses. He did not want it, he
+said, but she told him he was a young man, and would soon make that
+fly when he stood on his own feet. The old lady did not at all
+approve of the System in her heart, and she gave her grand-nephew to
+understand that, should he require more, he knew where to apply, and
+secrets would be kept. His father presented him with a hundred
+pounds--which also Richard said he did not want--he did not care for
+money. "Spend it or not," said the baronet, perfectly secure in him.
+
+Hippias had few injunctions to observe. They were to take up
+quarters at the hotel, Algernon's general run of company at the
+house not being altogether wholesome. The baronet particularly
+forewarned Hippias of the imprudence of attempting to restrict the
+young man's movements, and letting him imagine he was under
+surveillance. Richard having been, as it were, pollarded by
+despotism, was now to grow up straight, and bloom again, in complete
+independence, as far as he could feel. So did the sage decree; and
+we may pause a moment to reflect how wise were his previsions, and
+how successful they must have been, had not Fortune, the great foe
+to human cleverness, turned against him, or he against himself.
+
+The departure took place on a fine March morning. The bird of
+Winter sang from the budding tree; in the blue sky sang the bird of
+Summer. Adrian rode between Richard and Hippias to the Bellingham
+station, and vented his disgust on them after his own humorous
+fashion, because it did not rain and damp their ardour. In the rear
+came Lady Blandish and the baronet, conversing on the calm summit of
+success.
+
+"You have shaped him exactly to resemble yourself," she said,
+pointing with her riding-whip to the grave, stately figure of the
+young man.
+
+"Outwardly, perhaps," he answered, and led to a discussion on Purity
+and Strength, the lady saying that she preferred Purity.
+
+"But you do not," said the baronet. "And there I admire the always true
+instinct of women, that they all worship Strength in whatever form,
+and seem to know it to be the child of heaven; whereas Purity is but a
+characteristic, a garment, and can be spotted--how soon! For there
+are questions in this life with which we must grapple or be lost,
+and when, hunted by that cold eye of intense inner-consciousness, the
+clearest soul becomes a cunning fox, if it have not courage to stand
+and do battle. Strength indicates a boundless nature--like the Maker.
+Strength is a God to you--Purity a toy. A pretty one, and you seem to
+be fond of playing with it," he added, with unaccustomed slyness.
+
+The lady listened, pleased at the sportive malice which showed that
+the constraint on his mind had left him. It was for women to fight
+their fight now; she only took part in it for amusement. This is how
+the ranks of our enemies are thinned; no sooner do poor women put up
+a champion in their midst than she betrays them.
+
+"I see," she said archly, "we are the lovelier vessels; you claim
+the more direct descent. Men are seedlings: Women--slips! Nay, you
+have said so," she cried out at his gestured protestation, laughing.
+
+"But I never printed it."
+
+"Oh! what you speak answers for print with me."
+
+Exquisite Blandish! He could not choose but love her.
+
+"Tell me what are your plans?" she asked. "May a woman know?"
+
+He replied, "I have none or you would share them. I shall study him
+in the world. This indifference must wear off. I shall mark his
+inclinations now, and he shall be what he inclines to. Occupation
+will be his prime safety. His cousin Austin's plan of life appears
+most to his taste, and he can serve the people that way as well as
+in Parliament, should he have no stronger ambition. The clear duty
+of a man of any wealth is to serve the people as he best can. He
+shall go among Austin's set, if he wishes it, though personally I
+find no pleasure in rash imaginations, and undigested schemes built
+upon the mere instinct of principles."
+
+"Look at him now," said the lady. "He seems to care for nothing; not
+even for the beauty of the day."
+
+"Or Adrian's jokes," added the baronet.
+
+Adrian could be seen to be trying zealously to torment a laugh, or a
+confession of irritation, out of his hearers, stretching out his
+chin to one, and to the other, with audible asides. Richard he
+treated as a new instrument of destruction about to be let loose on
+the slumbering metropolis; Hippias as one in an interesting
+condition; and he got so much fun out of the notion of these two
+journeying together, and the mishaps that might occur to them, that
+he esteemed it almost a personal insult for his hearers not to
+laugh. The wise youth's dull life at Raynham had afflicted him with
+many peculiarities of the professional joker.
+
+"Oh! the Spring! the Spring!" he cried, as in scorn of his sallies
+they exchanged their unmeaning remarks on the sweet weather across
+him. "You seem both to be uncommonly excited by the operations of
+turtles, rooks, and daws. Why can't you let them alone?
+
+    'Wind bloweth,
+    Cock croweth,
+      Doodle-doo;
+    Hippy verteth,
+    Ricky sterteth,
+      Sing Cuckoo!'
+
+There's an old native pastoral!--Why don't you write a Spring
+sonnet, Ricky? The asparagus-beds are full of promise, I hear, and
+eke the strawberry. Berries I fancy your Pegasus has a taste for.
+What kind of berry was that I saw some verses of yours about
+once?--amatory verses to some kind of berry--yewberry, blueberry,
+glueberry! Pretty verses, decidedly warm. Lips, eyes, bosom,
+legs--legs? I don't think you gave her any legs. No legs and no
+nose. That appears to be the poetic taste of the day. It shall be
+admitted that you create the very beauties for a chaste people.
+
+    'O might I lie where leans her lute!'
+
+and offend no moral community. That's not a bad image of yours, my
+dear boy:
+
+    'Her shape is like an antelope
+    Upon the Eastern hills.'
+
+But as a candid critic, I would ask you if the likeness can be
+considered correct when you give her no legs? You will see at the
+ballet that you are in error about women at present, Richard. That
+admirable institution which our venerable elders have imported from
+Gallia for the instruction of our gaping youth, will edify and
+astonish you. I assure you I used, from reading THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP,
+to imagine all sorts of things about them, till I was taken there,
+and learnt that they are very like us after all, and then they
+ceased to trouble me. Mystery is the great danger to youth, my son!
+Mystery is woman's redoubtable weapon, O Richard of the Ordeal! I'm
+aware that you've had your lessons in anatomy, but nothing will
+persuade you that an anatomical figure means flesh and blood. You
+can't realize the fact. Do you intend to publish when you're in
+town? It'll be better not to put your name. Having one's name to a
+volume of poems is as bad as to an advertising pill."
+
+"I will send you an early copy, Adrian, when I publish," quoth
+Richard. "Hark at that old blackbird, uncle."
+
+"Yes!" Hippias quavered, looking up from the usual subject of his
+contemplation, and trying to take an interest in him, "fine old
+fellow!"
+
+"What a chuckle he gives out before he flies! Not unlike July
+nightingales. You know that bird I told you of--the blackbird that
+had its mate shot, and used to come to sing to old Dame Bakewell's
+bird from the tree opposite. A rascal knocked it over the day
+before yesterday, and the dame says her bird hasn't sung a note
+since."
+
+"Extraordinary!" Hippias muttered abstractedly. "I remember the
+verses."
+
+"But where's your moral?" interposed the wrathful Adrian. "Where's
+constancy rewarded?
+
+    'The ouzel-cock so black of hue,
+      The orange-tawny bill;
+     The rascal with his aim so true;
+      The Poet's little quill!'
+
+Where's the moral of that? except that all's game to the poet!
+Certainly we have a noble example of the devotedness of the female,
+who for three entire days refuses to make herself heard, on account
+of a defunct male. I suppose that's what Ricky dwells on."
+
+"As you please, my dear Adrian," says Richard, and points out
+larch-buds to his uncle, as they ride by the young green wood.
+
+The wise youth was driven to extremity. Such a lapse from his
+pupil's heroics to this last verge of Arcadian coolness, Adrian
+could not believe in. "Hark at this old blackbird!" he cried, in his
+turn, and pretending to, interpret his fits of song:
+
+"Oh, what a pretty comedy!--Don't we wear the mask well, my
+Fiesco?--Genoa will be our own to-morrow!--Only wait until the train
+has started--jolly! jolly! jolly! We'll be winners yet!
+
+"Not a bad verse--eh, Ricky? my Lucius Junius!"
+
+"You do the blackbird well," said Richard, and looked at him in a
+manner mildly affable.
+
+Adrian shrugged. "You're a young man of wonderful powers," he
+emphatically observed; meaning to say that Richard quite beat him;
+for which opinion Richard gravely thanked him, and with this they
+rode into Bellingham.
+
+There was young Tom Blaize at the station, in his Sunday beaver and
+gala waistcoat and neck-cloth, coming the lord over Tom Bakewell,
+who had preceded his master in charge of the baggage. He likewise
+was bound for London. Richard, as he was dismounting, heard Adrian
+say to the baronet: "The Beast, sir, appears to be going to fetch
+Beauty;" but he paid no heed to the words. Whether young Tom heard
+them or not, Adrian's look took the lord out of him, and he shrunk
+away into obscurity, where the nearest approach to the fashions
+which the tailors of Bellingham could supply to him, sat upon him
+more easily, and he was not stiffened by the eyes of the superiors
+whom he sought to rival. The baronet, Lady Blandish, and Adrian
+remained on horseback, and received Richard's adieux across the
+palings. He shook hands with each of them in the same kindly cold
+way, eliciting from Adrian a marked encomium on his style of doing
+it. The train came up, and Richard stepped after his uncle into one
+of the carriages.
+
+Now surely there will come an age when the presentation of science
+at war with Fortune and the Fates will be deemed the true epic of
+modern life; and the aspect of a scientific humanist who, by dint of
+incessant watchfulness, has maintained a System against those active
+forces, cannot be reckoned less than sublime, even though at the
+moment he but sit upon his horse, on a fine March morning such as
+this, and smile wistfully to behold the son of his heart, his System
+incarnate, wave a serene adieu to tutelage, neither too eager nor
+morbidly unwilling to try his luck alone for a term of two weeks. At
+present, I am aware, an audience impatient for blood and glory
+scorns the stress I am putting on incidents so minute, a picture so
+little imposing. An audience will come to whom it will be given to
+see the elementary machinery at work: who, as it were, from some
+slight hint of the straws, will feel the winds of March when they do
+not blow. To them will nothing be trivial, seeing that they will
+have in their eyes the invisible conflict going on around us, whose
+features a nod, a smile, a laugh of ours perpetually changes. And
+they will perceive, moreover, that in real life all hangs together:
+the train is laid in the lifting of an eyebrow, that bursts upon the
+field of thousands. They will see the links of things as they pass,
+and wonder not, as foolish people now do, that this great matter
+came out of that small one.
+
+Such an audience, then, will participate in the baronet's
+gratification at his son's demeanour, wherein he noted the calm
+bearing of experience not gained in the usual wanton way: and will
+not be without some excited apprehension at his twinge of
+astonishment, when, just as the train went sliding into swiftness,
+he beheld the grave, cold, self-possessed young man throw himself
+back in the carriage violently laughing. Science was at a loss to
+account for that. Sir Austin checked his mind from inquiring, that
+he might keep suspicion at a distance, but he thought it odd, and
+the jarring sensation that ran along his nerves at the sight,
+remained with him as he rode home.
+
+Lady Blandish's tender womanly intuition bade her say: "You see it
+was the very thing he wanted. He has got his natural spirits
+already."
+
+"It was," Adrian put in his word, "the exact thing he wanted. His
+spirits have returned miraculously."
+
+"Something amused him," said the baronet, with an eye on the puffing
+train.
+
+"Probably something his uncle said or did," Lady Blandish suggested,
+and led off at a gallop.
+
+Her conjecture chanced to be quite correct. The cause for Richard's
+laughter was simple enough. Hippias, on finding the carriage-door
+closed on him, became all at once aware of the bright-haired hope
+which dwells in Change, for one who does not woo her too frequently;
+and to express his sudden relief from mental despondency at the
+amorous prospect, the Dyspepsy bent and gave his hands a sharp rub
+between his legs: which unlucky action brought Adrian's pastoral,
+
+    "Hippy verteth,
+       Sing cuckoo!"
+
+in such comic colours before Richard, that a demon of laughter
+seized him.
+
+    "Hippy verteth!"
+
+Every time he glanced at his uncle the song sprang up, and he
+laughed so immoderately that it looked like madness come upon him.
+
+"Why, why, why, what are you laughing at, my dear boy," said
+Hippias, and was provoked by the contagious exercise to a modest
+"ha! ha!"
+
+"Why, what are _you_ laughing at, uncle?" cried Richard.
+
+"I really don't know," Hippias chuckled.
+
+"Nor I, uncle! Sing, cuckoo!"
+
+They laughed themselves into the pleasantest mood imaginable.
+Hippias not only came above-ground, he flew about in the very skies,
+_verting_ like any blithe creature of the season. He remembered old
+legal jokes, and anecdotes of Circuit; and Richard laughed at them
+all, but more at him--he was so genial, and childishly fresh, and
+innocently joyful at his own transformation, while a lurking doubt
+in the bottom of his eyes, now and then, that it might not last, and
+that he must go underground again, lent him a look of pathos and
+humour which tickled his youthful companion irresistibly, and made
+his heart warm to him.
+
+"I tell you what, uncle," said Richard, "I think travelling's a
+capital thing."
+
+"The best thing in the world, my dear boy," Hippias returned. "It
+makes me wish I had given up that Work of mine, and tried it before,
+instead of chaining myself to a task. We're quite different beings
+in a minute. I am. Hem! what shall we have for dinner?"
+
+"Leave that to me, uncle. I shall order for you. You know, I intend
+to make you well. How gloriously we go along! I should like to ride
+on a railway every day."
+
+Hippias remarked: "They say it rather injures the digestion."
+
+"Nonsense! see how you'll digest to-night and to-morrow."
+
+"Perhaps I shall do something yet," sighed Hippias, alluding to the
+vast literary fame he had aforetime dreamed of. "I hope I shall have
+a good night to-night."
+
+"Of course you will! What! after laughing like that?"
+
+"Ugh!" Hippias grunted, "I daresay, Richard, you sleep the moment
+you get into bed!"
+
+"The instant my head's on my pillow, and up the moment I wake.
+Health's everything!"
+
+"Health's everything!" echoed Hippias, from his immense distance.
+
+"And if you'll put yourself in my hands," Richard continued, "you
+shall do just as I do. You shall be well and strong, and sing
+'Jolly!' like Adrian's blackbird. You shall, upon my honour, uncle!"
+
+He specified the hours of devotion to his uncle's recovery--no less
+than twelve a day--that he intended to expend, and his cheery
+robustness almost won his uncle to leap up recklessly and clutch
+health as his own.
+
+"Mind," quoth Hippias, with a half-seduced smile, "mind your dishes
+are not too savoury!"
+
+"Light food and claret! Regular meals and amusement! Lend your heart
+to all, but give it to none!" exclaims young Wisdom, and Hippias
+mutters, "Yes! yes!" and intimates that the origin of his malady lay
+in his not following that maxim earlier.
+
+"Love ruins us, my dear boy," he said, thinking to preach Richard a
+lesson, and Richard boisterously broke out--
+
+    "The love of Monsieur Francatelli,
+    It was the ruin of--_et caetera_."
+
+Hippias blinked, exclaiming, "Really, my dear boy! I never saw you
+so excited."
+
+"It's the railway! It's the fun, uncle!"
+
+"Ah!" Hippias wagged a melancholy head, "you've got the Golden
+Bride! Keep her if you can. That's a pretty fable of your father's.
+I gave him the idea, though. Austin filches a great many of my
+ideas!"
+
+"Here's the idea in verse, uncle--
+
+    'O sunless walkers by the tide!
+    O have you seen the Golden Bride!
+     They say that she is fair beyond
+    All women; faithful, and more fond!'
+
+You know, the young inquirer comes to a group of penitent sinners by
+the brink of a stream. They howl, and answer:
+
+     'Faithful she is, but she forsakes:
+     And fond, yet endless woe she makes:
+     And fair! but with this curse she's cross'd;
+    To know her not till she is lost!'
+
+Then the doleful party march off in single file solemnly, and the
+fabulist pursues--
+
+     'She hath a palace in the West:
+     Bright Hesper lights her to her rest:
+     And him the Morning Star awakes
+     Whom to her charmed arms she takes.
+
+    'So lives he till he sees, alas!
+    The maids of baser metal pass.'
+
+And prodigal of the happiness she lends him, he asks to share it
+with one of them. There is the Silver Maid, and the Copper, and the
+Brassy Maid, and others of them. First, you know, he tries
+Argentine, and finds her only twenty to the pound, and has a worse
+experience with Copperina, till he descends to the scullery; and the
+lower he goes, the less obscure become the features of his Bride of
+Gold, and all her radiance shines forth, my uncle!"
+
+"Verse rather blunts the point. Well, keep to her, now you've got
+her," says Hippias.
+
+"We will, uncle! Look how the farms fly past! Look at the cattle in
+the fields! And how the lines duck, and swim up!
+
+    'She claims the whole, and not the part--
+    The coin of an unused heart!
+    To gain his Golden Bride again,
+    He hunts with melancholy men,'
+
+--and is waked no longer by the Morning Star!"
+
+"Not if he doesn't sleep till an hour before it rises!" Hippias
+interjected. "You don't rhyme badly. But stick to prose. Poetry's a
+Base-metal maid. I'm not sure that any writing's good for the
+digestion. I'm afraid it has spoilt mine."
+
+"Fear nothing, uncle!" laughed Richard. "You shall ride in the park
+with me every day to get an appetite. You and I and the Golden
+Bride. You know that little poem of Sandoe's?
+
+         'She rides in the park on a prancing bay,
+           She and her squires together;
+         Her dark locks gleam from a bonnet of grey,
+           And toss with the tossing feather.
+
+         'Too calmly proud for a glance of pride
+           Is the beautiful face as it passes;
+         The cockneys nod to each other aside,
+           The coxcombs lift their glasses.
+
+         'And throng to her, sigh to her, you that can breach
+           The ice-wall that guards her securely;
+         You have not such bliss, though she smile on you each,
+           As the heart that can image her purely.'
+
+Wasn't Sandoe once a friend of my father's? I suppose they
+quarrelled. He understands the heart. What does he make his 'Humble
+Lover' say?
+
+        'True, Madam, you may think to part
+          Conditions by a glacier-ridge,
+         But Beauty's for the largest heart,
+          And all abysses Love can bridge!'"
+
+Hippias now laughed; grimly, as men laugh at the emptiness of words.
+
+"Largest heart!" he sneered. "What's a 'glacier-ridge'? I've never
+seen one. I can't deny it rhymes with 'bridge.' But don't go
+parading your admiration of that person, Richard. Your father will
+speak to you on the subject when he thinks fit."
+
+"I thought they had quarrelled," said Richard. "What a pity!" and he
+murmured to a pleased ear:
+
+    "Beauty's for the largest heart!"
+
+The flow of their conversation was interrupted by the entrance of
+passengers at a station. Richard examined their faces with pleasure.
+All faces pleased him. Human nature sat tributary at the feet of him
+and his Golden Bride. As he could not well talk his thoughts before
+them, he looked out at the windows, and enjoyed the changing
+landscape, projecting all sorts of delights for his old friend
+Ripton, and musing hazily on the wondrous things he was to do in the
+world; of the great service he was to be to his fellow-creatures. In
+the midst of his reveries he was landed in London. Tom Bakewell
+stood at the carriage door. A glance told Richard that his squire
+had something curious on his mind, and he gave Tom the word to
+speak out. Tom edged his master out of hearing, and began sputtering
+a laugh.
+
+"Dash'd if I can help it, sir!" he said. "That young Tom! He've come
+to town dressed that spicy! and he don't know his way about no more
+than a stag. He's come to fetch somebody from another rail, and he
+don't know how to get there, and he ain't sure about which rail
+'tis. Look at him, Mr. Richard! There he goes."
+
+Young Tom appeared to have the weight of all London on his beaver.
+
+"Who has he come for?" Richard asked.
+
+"Don't you know, sir? You don't like me to mention the name,"
+mumbled Tom, bursting to be perfectly intelligible.
+
+"Is it for her, Tom?"
+
+"Miss Lucy, sir."
+
+Richard turned away, and was seized by Hippias, who begged him to
+get out of the noise and pother, and caught hold of his slack arm to
+bear him into a conveyance; but Richard, by wheeling half to the
+right, or left, always got his face round to the point where young
+Tom was manoeuvring to appear at his ease. Even when they were
+seated in the conveyance, Hippias could not persuade him to drive
+off. He made the excuse that he did not wish to start till there was
+a clear road. At last young Tom cast anchor by a policeman, and,
+doubtless at the official's suggestion, bashfully took seat in a
+cab, and was shot into the whirlpool of London. Richard then angrily
+asked his driver what he was waiting for.
+
+"Are you ill, my boy?" said Hippias. "Where's your colour?"
+
+He laughed oddly, and made a random answer that he hoped the fellow
+would drive fast.
+
+"I hate slow motion after being in the railway," he said.
+
+Hippias assured him there was something the matter with him.
+
+"Nothing, uncle! nothing!" said Richard, looking fiercely candid.
+
+They say, that when the skill and care of men rescue a drowned
+wretch from extinction, and warm the flickering spirit into steady
+flame, such pain it is, the blood forcing its way along the dry
+channels, and the heavily-ticking nerves, and the sullen heart--the
+struggle of life and death in him--grim death relaxing his gripe;
+such pain it is, he cries out no thanks to them that pull him by
+inches from the depths of the dead river. And he who has thought a
+love extinct, and is surprised by the old fires, and the old
+tyranny, he rebels, and strives to fight clear of the cloud of
+forgotten sensations that settle on him; such pain it is, the old
+sweet music reviving through his frame, and the charm of his passion
+fixing him afresh. Still was fair Lucy the one woman to Richard. He
+had forbidden her name but from an instinct of self-defence. Must
+the maids of baser metal dominate him anew, it is in Lucy's shape.
+Thinking of her now so near him--his darling! all her graces, her
+sweetness, her truth; for, despite his bitter blame of her, he knew
+her true--swam in a thousand visions before his eyes; visions
+pathetic, and full of glory, that now wrung his heart, and now
+elated it. As well might a ship attempt to calm the sea, as this
+young man the violent emotion that began to rage in his breast. "I
+shall not see her!" he said to himself exultingly, and at the same
+instant thought, how black was every corner of the earth but that
+one spot where Lucy stood! how utterly cheerless the place he was
+going to! Then he determined to bear it; to live in darkness; there
+was a refuge in the idea of a voluntary martyrdom. "For if I chose I
+could see her--this day within an hour!--I could see her, and touch
+her hand, and, oh, heaven!--But I do not choose." And a great wave
+swelled through him, and was crushed down only to swell again more
+stormily.
+
+Then Tom Bakewell's words recurred to him that young Tom Blaize was
+uncertain where to go for her, and that she might be thrown on this
+Babylon alone. And flying from point to point, it struck him that
+they had known at Raynham of her return, and had sent him to town to
+be out of the way--they had been miserably plotting against him once
+more. "They shall see what right they have to fear me. I'll shame
+them!" was the first turn taken by his wrathful feelings, as he
+resolved to go, and see her safe, and calmly return to his uncle,
+whom he sincerely believed not to be one of the conspirators.
+Nevertheless, after forming that resolve, he sat still, as if there
+was something fatal in the wheels that bore him away from
+it--perhaps because he knew, as some do when passion is lord, that
+his intelligence juggled with him; though none the less keenly did
+he feel his wrongs and suspicions. His Golden Bride was waning fast.
+But when Hippias ejaculated to cheer him: "We shall soon be there!"
+the spell broke. Richard stopped the cab, saying he wanted to speak
+to Tom, and would ride with him the rest of the journey. He knew
+well enough which line of railway his Lucy must come by. He had
+studied every town and station on the line. Before his uncle could
+express more than a mute remonstrance, he jumped out and hailed Tom
+Bakewell, who came behind with the boxes and baggage in a companion
+cab, his head a yard beyond the window to make sure of his ark of
+safety, the vehicle preceding.
+
+"What an extraordinary, impetuous boy it is," said Hippias. "We're
+in the very street!"
+
+Within a minute the stalwart Berry, despatched by the baronet to
+arrange everything for their comfort, had opened the door, and made
+his bow.
+
+"Mr. Richard, sir?--evaporated?" was Berry's modulated inquiry.
+
+"Behind--among the boxes, fool!" Hippias growled, as he received
+Berry's muscular assistance to alight. "Lunch ready--eh!"
+
+"Luncheon was ordered precise at two o'clock, sir--been in
+attendance one quarter of an hour. Heah!" Berry sang out to the
+second cab, which, with its pyramid of luggage, remained stationary
+some thirty paces distant. At his voice the majestic pile
+deliberately turned its back on them, and went off in a contrary
+direction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+RECORDS THE RAPID DEVELOPMENT OF THE HERO
+
+
+On the stroke of the hour when Ripton Thompson was accustomed to
+consult his good watch for practical purposes, and sniff freedom and
+the forthcoming dinner, a burglarious foot entered the clerk's
+office where he sat, and a man of a scowling countenance, who looked
+a villain, and whom he was afraid he knew, slid a letter into his
+hands, nodding that it would be prudent for him to read, and be
+silent. Ripton obeyed in alarm. Apparently the contents of the
+letter relieved his conscience; for he reached down his hat, and
+told Mr. Beazley to inform his father that he had business of
+pressing importance in the West, and should meet him at the station.
+Mr. Beazley zealously waited upon the paternal Thompson without
+delay, and together making their observations from the window, they
+beheld a cab of many boxes, into which Ripton darted and was
+followed by one in groom's dress. It was Saturday, the day when
+Ripton gave up his law-readings, magnanimously to bestow himself
+upon his family, and Mr. Thompson liked to have his son's arm as he
+walked down to the station; but that third glass of Port which
+always stood for his second, and the groom's suggestion of
+aristocratic acquaintances, prevented Mr. Thompson from interfering:
+so Ripton was permitted to depart.
+
+In the cab Ripton made a study of the letter he held. It had the
+preciseness of an imperial mandate.
+
+     "DEAR RIPTON,--You are to get lodgings for a lady immediately.
+     Not a word to a soul. Then come along with Tom.
+
+                                                           R. D. F."
+
+
+
+"Lodgings for a lady!" Ripton meditated aloud: "What sort of
+lodgings? Where am I to get lodgings? Who's the lady?--I say!" he
+addressed the mysterious messenger. "So you're Tom Bakewell, are
+you, Tom?"
+
+Tom grinned his identity.
+
+"Do you remember the rick, Tom? Ha! ha! We got out of that neatly.
+We might all have been transported, though. I could have convicted
+you, Tom, safe! It's no use coming across a practised lawyer. Now
+tell me." Ripton having nourished his powers, commenced his
+examination: "Who's this lady?"
+
+"Better wait till you see Mr. Richard, sir," Tom resumed his scowl
+to reply.
+
+"Ah!" Ripton acquiesced. "Is she young, Tom?"
+
+Tom said she was not old.
+
+"Handsome, Tom?"
+
+"Some might think one thing, some another," Tom said.
+
+"And where does she come from now?" asked Ripton with the friendly
+cheerfulness of a baffled counsellor.
+
+"Comes from the country, sir."
+
+"A friend of the family, I suppose? a relation?"
+
+Ripton left this insinuating query to be answered by a look. Tom's
+face was a dead blank.
+
+"Ah!" Ripton took a breath, and eyed the mask opposite him. "Why,
+you're quite a scholar, Tom! Mr. Richard is well? All right at
+home?"
+
+"Come to town this mornin' with his uncle," said Tom. "All well,
+thank ye, sir."
+
+"Ha!" cried Ripton, more than ever puzzled, "now I see. You all came
+to town to-day, and these are your boxes outside. So, so! But Mr.
+Richard writes for me to get lodgings for a lady. There must be some
+mistake--he wrote in a hurry. He wants lodgings for you all--eh?"
+
+"'M sure I d'n know what he wants," said Tom. "You'd better go by
+the letter, sir."
+
+Ripton re-consulted that document. "'Lodgings for a lady, and then
+come along with Tom. Not a word to a soul.' I say! that looks
+like--but he never cared for _them_. You don't mean to say, Tom,
+he's been running away with anybody?"
+
+Tom fell back upon his first reply: "Better wait till ye see Mr.
+Richard, sir," and Ripton exclaimed: "Hanged if you ain't the
+tightest witness I ever saw! I shouldn't like to have you in a box.
+Some of you country fellows beat any number of cockneys. You do!"
+
+Tom received the compliment stubbornly on his guard, and Ripton, as
+nothing was to be got out of him, set about considering how to
+perform his friend's injunctions; deciding firstly, that a lady
+fresh from the country ought to lodge near the parks, in which
+direction he told the cabman to drive. Thus, unaware of his high
+destiny, Ripton joined the hero, and accepted his character in the
+New Comedy.
+
+It is, nevertheless, true that certain favoured people do have
+beneficent omens to prepare them for their parts when the hero is in
+full career, so that they really may be nerved to meet him; ay, and
+to check him in his course, had they that signal courage. For
+instance, Mrs. Elizabeth Berry, a ripe and wholesome landlady of
+advertised lodgings, on the borders of Kensington, noted, as she sat
+rocking her contemplative person before the parlour fire this very
+March afternoon, a supernatural tendency in that fire to burn _all
+on one side_: which signifies that a wedding approaches the house.
+Why--who shall say? Omens are as impassable as heroes. It may be
+because in these affairs the fire is thought to be all on one side.
+Enough that the omen exists, and spoke its solemn warning to the
+devout woman. Mrs. Berry, in her circle, was known as a certified
+lecturer against the snares of matrimony. Still that was no reason
+why she should not like a wedding. Expectant, therefore, she watched
+the one glowing cheek of Hymen, and with pleasing tremours beheld a
+cab of many boxes draw up by her bit of garden, and a gentleman
+emerge from it in the act of consulting an advertisement paper. The
+gentleman required lodgings for a lady. Lodgings for a lady Mrs.
+Berry could produce, and a very roseate smile for a gentleman; so
+much so that Ripton forgot to ask about the terms, which made the
+landlady in Mrs. Berry leap up to embrace him as the happy man. But
+her experienced woman's eye checked her enthusiasm. He had not the
+air of a bridegroom: he did not seem to have a weight on his chest,
+or an itch to twiddle everything with his fingers. At any rate, he
+was not the bridegroom for whom omens fly abroad. Promising to have
+all ready for the lady within an hour, Mrs. Berry fortified him with
+her card, curtsied him back to his cab, and floated him off on her
+smiles.
+
+The remarkable vehicle which had woven this thread of intrigue
+through London streets, now proceeded sedately to finish its
+operations. Ripton was landed at a hotel in Westminster. Ere he was
+half-way up the stairs, a door opened, and his old comrade in
+adventure rushed down. Richard allowed up time for salutations.
+"Have you done it?" was all he asked. For answer Ripton handed him
+Mrs. Berry's card. Richard took it, and left him standing there.
+Five minutes elapsed, and then Ripton heard the gracious rustle of
+feminine garments above. Richard came a little in advance, leading
+and half supporting a figure in a black-silk mantle and small black
+straw bonnet; young--that was certain, though she held her veil so
+close he could hardly catch the outlines of her face; girlishly
+slender, and sweet and simple in appearance. The hush that came with
+her, and her soft manner of moving, stirred the silly youth to some
+of those ardours that awaken the Knight of Dames in our bosoms. He
+felt that he would have given considerable sums for her to lift her
+veil. He could see that she was trembling--perhaps weeping. It was
+the master of her fate she clung to. They passed him without
+speaking. As she went by, her head passively bent, Ripton had a
+glimpse of noble tresses and a lovely neck; great golden curls hung
+loosely behind, pouring from under her bonnet. She looked a captive
+borne to the sacrifice. What Ripton, after a sight of those curls,
+would have given for her just to lift her veil an instant and strike
+him blind with beauty, was, fortunately for his exchequer, never
+demanded of him. And he had absolutely been composing speeches as he
+came along in the cab! gallant speeches for the lady, and sly
+congratulatory ones for his friend, to be delivered as occasion
+should serve, that both might know him a man of the world, and be at
+their ease. He forgot the smirking immoralities he had revelled in.
+This was clearly serious. Ripton did not require to be told that his
+friend was in love, and meant that life and death business called
+marriage, parents and guardians consenting or not.
+
+Presently Richard returned to him, and said hurriedly, "I want you
+now to go to my uncle at our hotel. Keep him quiet till I come. Say
+I had to see you--say anything. I shall be there by the dinner hour.
+Rip! I must talk to you alone after dinner."
+
+Ripton feebly attempted to reply that he was due at home. He was
+very curious to hear the plot of the New Comedy; and besides, there
+was Richard's face questioning him sternly and confidently for signs
+of unhesitating obedience. He finished his grimaces by asking the
+name and direction of the hotel. Richard pressed his hand. It is
+much to obtain even that recognition of our devotion from the hero.
+
+Tom Bakewell also received his priming, and, to judge by his
+chuckles and grins, rather appeared to enjoy the work cut out for
+him. In a few minutes they had driven to their separate
+destinations; Ripton was left to the unusual exercise of his fancy.
+Such is the nature of youth and its thirst for romance, that only to
+act as a subordinate is pleasant. When one unfurls the standard of
+defiance to parents and guardians, he may be sure of raising a
+lawless troop of adolescent ruffians, born rebels, to any amount.
+The beardless crew know that they have not a chance of pay; but what
+of that when the rosy prospect of thwarting their elders is in view?
+Though it is to see another eat the Forbidden Fruit, they will run
+all his risks with him. Gaily Ripton took rank as lieutenant in the
+enterprise, and the moment his heart had sworn the oaths, he was
+rewarded by an exquisite sense of the charms of existence. London
+streets wore a sly laugh to him. He walked with a dandified heel.
+The generous youth ogled aristocratic carriages, and glanced
+intimately at the ladies, overflowingly happy. The crossing-sweepers
+blessed him. He hummed lively tunes, he turned over old jokes in his
+mouth unctuously, he hugged himself, he had a mind to dance down
+Piccadilly, and all because a friend of his was running away with a
+pretty girl, and he was in the secret.
+
+It was only when he stood on the door-step of Richard's hotel, that
+his jocund mood was a little dashed by remembering that he had then
+to commence the duties of his office, and must fabricate a plausible
+story to account for what he knew nothing about--a part that the
+greatest of sages would find it difficult to perform. The young,
+however, whom sages well may envy, seldom fail in lifting their
+inventive faculties to the level of their spirits, and two minutes
+of Hippias's angry complaints against the friend he serenely
+inquired for, gave Ripton his cue.
+
+"We're in the very street--within a stone's-throw of the house, and
+he jumps like a harlequin out of my cab into another; he must be
+mad--that boy's got madness in him!--and carries off all the
+boxes--my dinner-pills, too! and keeps away the whole of the day,
+though he promised to go to the doctor, and had a dozen engagements
+with me," said Hippias, venting an enraged snarl to sum up his
+grievances.
+
+Ripton at once told him that the doctor was not at home.
+
+"Why, you don't mean to say he's been to the doctor?" Hippias cried
+out.
+
+"He has called on him twice, sir," said Ripton, expressively. "On
+leaving me he was going a third time. I shouldn't wonder that's what
+detains him--he's so determined."
+
+By fine degrees Ripton ventured to grow circumstantial, saying that
+Richard's case was urgent and required immediate medical advice; and
+that both he and his father were of opinion Richard should not lose
+an hour in obtaining it.
+
+"He's alarmed about himself," said Ripton, and tapped his chest.
+
+Hippias protested he had never heard a word from his nephew of any
+physical affliction.
+
+"He was afraid of making you anxious, I think, sir."
+
+Algernon Feverel and Richard came in while he was hammering at the
+alphabet to recollect the first letter of the doctor's name. They
+had met in the hall below, and were laughing heartily as they
+entered the room. Ripton jumped up to get the initiative.
+
+"Have you seen the doctor?" he asked, significantly plucking at
+Richard's fingers.
+
+Richard was all abroad at the question.
+
+Algernon clapped him on the back. "What the deuce do you want with
+doctor, boy?"
+
+The solid thump awakened him to see matters as they were. "Oh, ay!
+the doctor!" he said, smiling frankly at his lieutenant. "Why, he
+tells me he'd back me to do Milo's trick in a week from the present
+day.--Uncle," he came forward to Hippias, "I hope you'll excuse me
+for running off as I did. I was in a hurry. I left something at the
+railway. This stupid Rip thinks I went to the doctor about myself.
+The fact was, I wanted to fetch the doctor to see you here--so that
+you might have no trouble, you know. You can't bear the sight of his
+instruments and skeletons--I've heard you say so. You said it set
+all your marrow in revolt--'fried your marrow,' I think were the
+words, and made you see twenty thousand different ways of sliding
+down to the chambers of the Grim King. Don't you remember?"
+
+Hippias emphatically did not remember, and he did not believe the
+story. Irritation at the mad ravishment of his pill-box rendered him
+incredulous. As he had no means of confuting his nephew, all he
+could do safely to express his disbelief in him, was to utter
+petulant remarks on his powerlessness to appear at the dinner-table
+that day: upon which--Berry just then trumpeting dinner--Algernon
+seized one arm of the Dyspepsy, and Richard another, and the
+laughing couple bore him into the room where dinner was laid, Ripton
+sniggering in the rear, the really happy man of the party.
+
+They had fun at the dinner-table. Richard would have it; and his
+gaiety, his by-play, his princely superiority to truth and heroic
+promise of over-riding all our laws, his handsome face, the lord and
+possessor of beauty that he looked, as it were a star shining on his
+forehead, gained the old complete mastery over Ripton, who had been,
+mentally at least, half patronizing him till then, because he knew
+more of London and life, and was aware that his friend now depended
+upon him almost entirely.
+
+After a second circle of the claret, the hero caught his
+lieutenant's eye across the table, and said:
+
+"We must go out and talk over that law-business, Rip, before you go.
+Do you think the old lady has any chance?"
+
+"Not a bit!" said Ripton, authoritatively.
+
+"But it's worth fighting--eh, Rip?"
+
+"Oh, certainly!" was Ripton's mature opinion.
+
+Richard observed that Ripton's father seemed doubtful. Ripton cited
+his father's habitual caution. Richard made a playful remark on the
+necessity of sometimes acting in opposition to fathers. Ripton
+agreed to it--in certain cases.
+
+"Yes, yes! in certain cases," said Richard.
+
+"Pretty legal morality, gentlemen!" Algernon interjected; Hippias
+adding: "And lay, too!"
+
+The pair of uncles listened further to the fictitious dialogue, well
+kept up on both sides, and in the end desired a statement of the old
+lady's garrulous case; Hippias offering to decide what her chances
+were in law, and Algernon to give a common-sense judgment.
+
+"Rip will tell you," said Richard, deferentially signalling the
+lawyer. "I've a bad hand at these matters. Tell them how it stands,
+Rip."
+
+Ripton disguised his excessive uneasiness under endeavours to right
+his position on his chair, and, inwardly praying speed to the claret
+jug to come and strengthen his wits, began with a careless aspect:
+"Oh, nothing! She--very curious old character! She--a--wears a wig.
+She--a--very curious old character indeed! She--a--quite the old
+style. There's no doing anything with her!" and Ripton took a long
+breath to relieve himself after his elaborate fiction.
+
+"So it appears," Hippias commented, and Algernon asked: "Well? and
+about her wig? Somebody stole it?" while Richard, whose features
+were grim with suppressed laughter, bade the narrator continue.
+
+Ripton lunged for the claret jug. He had got an old lady like an
+oppressive bundle on his brain, and he was as helpless as she was.
+In the pangs of ineffectual authorship his ideas shot at her wig,
+and then at her one characteristic of extreme obstinacy, and tore
+back again at her wig, but she would not be animated. The obstinate
+old thing would remain a bundle. Law studies seemed light in
+comparison with this tremendous task of changing an old lady from a
+doll to a human creature. He flung off some claret, perspired
+freely, and, with a mental tribute to the cleverness of those author
+fellows, recommenced: "Oh, nothing! She--Richard knows her better
+than I do--an old lady--somewhere down in Suffolk. I think we had
+better advise her not to proceed. The expenses of litigation are
+enormous! She--I think we had better advise her to stop short, and
+not make any scandal."
+
+"And not make any scandal!" Algernon took him up. "Come, come!
+there's something more than a wig, then?"
+
+Ripton was commanded to proceed, whether she did or no. The luckless
+fictionist looked straight at his pitiless leader, and blurted out
+dubiously, "She--there's a daughter."
+
+"Born with effort!" ejaculated Hippias. "Must give her pause after
+that! and I'll take the opportunity to stretch my length on the
+sofa. Heigho! that's true what Austin says: 'The general prayer
+should be for a full stomach, and the individual for one that works
+well; for on that basis only are we a match for temporal matters,
+and able to contemplate eternal.' Sententious, but true. I gave him
+the idea, though! Take care of your stomachs, boys! and if ever you
+hear of a monument proposed to a scientific cook or gastronomic
+doctor, send in your subscriptions. Or say to him while he lives, Go
+forth, and be a Knight. Ha! They have a good cook at this house. He
+suits me better than ours at Raynham. I almost wish I had brought my
+manuscript to town, I feel so much better. Aha! I didn't expect to
+digest at all without my regular incentive. I think I shall give it
+up.--What do you say to the theatre to-night, boys!"
+
+Richard shouted, "Bravo, uncle!"
+
+"Let Mr. Thompson finish first," said Algernon. "I want to hear the
+conclusion of the story. The old girl has a wig and a daughter. I'll
+swear somebody runs away with one of the two! Fill your glass, Mr.
+Thompson, and forward!"
+
+"So somebody does," Ripton received his impetus. "And they're found
+in town together," he made a fresh jerk. "She--a--that is, the old
+lady--found them in company."
+
+"She finds him with her wig on in company!" said Algernon. "Capital!
+Here's matter for the lawyers!"
+
+"And you advise her not to proceed, under such circumstances of
+aggravation?" Hippias observed, humorously twinkling with his
+stomachic contentment.
+
+"It's the daughter," Ripton sighed, and surrendering to pressure,
+hurried on recklessly, "A runaway match--beautiful girl!--the only
+son of a baronet--married by special licence. A--the point is," he
+now brightened and spoke from his own element, "the point is whether
+the marriage can be annulled, as she's of the Catholic persuasion
+and he's a Protestant, and they're both married under age. That's
+the point."
+
+Having come to the point he breathed extreme relief, and saw things
+more distinctly; not a little amazed at his leader's horrified face.
+
+The two elders were making various absurd inquiries, when Richard
+sent his chair to the floor, crying, "What a muddle you're in, Rip!
+You're mixing half-a-dozen stories together. The old lady I told you
+about was old Dame Bakewell, and the dispute was concerning a
+neighbour of hers who encroached on her garden, and I said I'd pay
+the money to see her righted!"
+
+"Ah," said Ripton, humbly, "I was thinking of the other. Her garden!
+Cabbages don't interest me"----
+
+"Here, come along," Richard beckoned to him savagely. "I'll be back
+in five minutes, uncle," he nodded coolly to either.
+
+The young men left the room. In the hall-passage they met Berry,
+dressed to return to Raynham. Richard dropped a helper to the
+intelligence into his hand, and warned him not to gossip much of
+London. Berry bowed perfect discreetness.
+
+"What on earth induced you to talk about Protestants and Catholics
+marrying, Rip?" said Richard, as soon as they were in the street.
+
+"Why," Ripton answered, "I was so hard pushed for it, 'pon my
+honour, I didn't know what to say. I ain't an author, you know; I
+can't make a story. I was trying to invent a point, and I couldn't
+think of any other, and I thought that was just the point likely to
+make a jolly good dispute. Capital dinners they give at those crack
+hotels. Why did you throw it all upon me? I didn't begin on the old
+lady."
+
+The hero mused, "It's odd! It's impossible you could have known!
+I'll tell you why, Rip! I wanted to try you. You fib well at long
+range, but you don't do at close quarters and single combat. You're
+good behind walls, but not worth a shot in the open. I just see what
+you're fit for. You're staunch--that I am certain of. You always
+were. Lead the way to one of the parks--down in that direction. You
+know?--where she is!"
+
+Ripton led the way. His dinner had prepared this young Englishman
+to defy the whole artillery of established morals. With the muffled
+roar of London around them, alone in a dark slope of green, the
+hero, leaning on his henchman, and speaking in a harsh clear
+undertone, delivered his explanations. Doubtless the true heroic
+insignia and point of view will be discerned, albeit in common
+private's uniform.
+
+"They've been plotting against me for a year, Rip! When you see her,
+you'll know what it was to have such a creature taken away from you.
+It nearly killed me. Never mind what she is. She's the most perfect
+and noble creature God ever made! It's not only her beauty--I don't
+care so much about that!--but when you've once seen her, she seems
+to draw music from all the nerves of your body; but she's such an
+angel. I worship her. And her mind's like her face. She's pure gold.
+There, you'll see her to-night.
+
+"Well," he pursued, after inflating Ripton with this rapturous
+prospect, "they got her away, and I recovered. It was Mister
+Adrian's work. What's my father's objection to her? Because of her
+birth? She's educated; her manners are beautiful--full of
+refinement--quick and soft! Can they show me one of their ladies
+like her?--she's the daughter of a naval lieutenant! Because she's a
+Catholic? What has religion to do with"--he pronounced "Love!" a
+little modestly--as it were a blush in his voice.
+
+"Well, when I recovered I thought I did not care for her. It shows
+how we know ourselves! And I cared for nothing. I felt as if I had
+no blood. I tried to imitate my dear Austin. I wish to God he were
+here. I love Austin. He would understand her. He's coming back this
+year, and then--but it'll be too late then.--Well, my father's
+always scheming to make me perfect--he has never spoken to me a word
+about her, but I can see her in his eyes--he wanted to give me a
+change, he said, and asked me to come to town with my uncle Hippy,
+and I consented. It was another plot to get me out of the way! As I
+live, I had no more idea of meeting her than of flying to heaven!"
+
+He lifted his face. "Look at those old elm branches! How they seem
+to mix among the stars!--glittering; fruits of Winter!"
+
+Ripton tipped his comical nose upward, and was in duty bound to say,
+Yes! though he observed no connection between them and the
+narrative.
+
+"Well," the hero went on, "I came to town. There I heard she was
+coming, too--coming home. It must have been fate, Ripton! Heaven
+forgive me! I was angry with her, and I thought I should like to see
+her once--only once--and reproach her for being false--for she never
+wrote to me. And, oh, the dear angel! what she must have
+suffered!--I gave my uncle the slip, and got to the railway she was
+coming by. There was a fellow going to meet her--a farmer's
+son--and, good God! they were going to try and make her marry him! I
+remembered it all then. A servant of the farm had told me. That
+fellow went to the wrong station, I suppose, for we saw nothing of
+him. There she was--not changed a bit!--looking lovelier than ever!
+And when she saw me, I knew in a minute that she must love me till
+death!--You don't know what it is yet, Rip!--Will you believe
+it?--Though I was as sure she loved me and had been true as steel,
+as that I shall see her to-night, I spoke bitterly to her. And she
+bore it meekly--she looked like a saint. I told her there was but
+one hope of life for me--she must prove she was true, and as I give
+up all, so must she. I don't know what I said. The thought of losing
+her made me mad. She tried to plead with me to wait--it was for my
+sake, I know. I pretended, like a miserable hypocrite, that she did
+not love me at all. I think I said shameful things. Oh what noble
+creatures women are! She hardly had strength to move. I took her to
+that place where you found us.--Rip! she went down on her knees to
+me. I never dreamed of anything in life so lovely as she looked
+then. Her eyes were thrown up, bright with a crowd of tears--her
+dark brows bent together, like Pain and Beauty meeting in one; and
+her glorious golden hair swept off her shoulders as she hung forward
+to my hands.--Could I lose such a prize?--If anything could have
+persuaded me, would not that?--I thought of Dante's Madonna--Guido's
+Magdalen.--Is there sin in it? I see none! And if there is, it's all
+mine! I swear she's spotless of a thought of sin. I see her very
+soul! Cease to love her? Who dares ask me? Cease to love her? Why, I
+live on her!--To see her little chin straining up from her throat,
+as she knelt to me!--there was one curl that fell across her
+throat"....
+
+Ripton listened for more. Richard had gone off in a muse at the
+picture.
+
+"Well?" said Ripton, "and how about that young farmer fellow?"
+
+The hero's head was again contemplating the starry branches. His
+lieutenant's question came to him after an interval.
+
+"Young Tom? Why, it's young Tom Blaize--son of our old enemy, Rip! I
+like the old man now. Oh! I saw nothing of the fellow."
+
+"Lord!" cried Ripton, "are we going to get into a mess with Blaizes
+again? I don't like that!"
+
+His commander quietly passed his likes or dislikes.
+
+"But when he goes to the train, and finds she's not there?" Ripton
+suggested.
+
+"I've provided for that. The fool went to the South-east instead of
+the South-west. All warmth, all sweetness, comes with the
+South-west!--I've provided for that, friend Rip. My trusty Tom
+awaits him there, as if by accident. He tells him he has not seen
+her, and advises him to remain in town, and go for her there
+to-morrow, and the day following. Tom has money for the work. Young
+Tom ought to see London, you know, Rip!--like you. We shall gain
+some good clear days. And when old Blaize hears of it--what then? I
+have her! she's mine!--Besides, he won't hear for a week. This Tom
+beats that Tom in cunning, I'll wager. Ha! ha!" the hero burst out
+at a recollection. "What do you think, Rip? My father has some sort
+of System with me, it appears, and when I came to town the time
+before, he took me to some people--the Grandisons--and what do you
+think? one of the daughters is a little girl--a nice little thing
+enough--very funny--and he wants me to wait for her! He hasn't said
+so, but I know it. I know what he means. Nobody understands him but
+me. I know he loves me, and is one of the best of men--but just
+consider!--a _little girl_ who just comes up to my elbow. Isn't it
+ridiculous? Did you ever hear such nonsense?"
+
+Ripton emphasized his opinion that it certainly was foolish.
+
+"No, no! The die's cast!" said Richard. "They've been plotting for a
+year up to this day, and this is what comes of it! If my father
+loves me, he will love her. And if he loves me, he'll forgive my
+acting against his wishes, and see it was the only thing to be done.
+Come! step out! what a time we've been!" and away he went,
+compelling Ripton to the sort of strides a drummer-boy has to take
+beside a column of grenadiers.
+
+Ripton began to wish himself in love, seeing that it endowed a man
+with wind so that he could breathe great sighs, while going at a
+tremendous pace, and experience no sensation of fatigue. The hero
+was communing with the elements, his familiars, and allowed him to
+pant as he pleased. Some keen-eyed Kensington urchins, noticing the
+discrepancy between the pedestrian powers of the two, aimed their
+wit at Mr. Thompson junior's expense. The pace, and nothing but the
+pace, induced Ripton to proclaim that they had gone too far, when
+they discovered that they had overshot the mark by half a mile. In
+the street over which stood love's star, the hero thundered his
+presence at a door, and evoked a flying housemaid, who knew not Mrs.
+Berry. The hero attached significance to the fact that his instincts
+should have betrayed him, for he could have sworn to that house. The
+door being shut he stood in dead silence.
+
+"Haven't you got her card?" Ripton inquired, and heard that it was
+in the custody of the cabman. Neither of them could positively bring
+to mind the number of the house.
+
+"You ought to have chalked it, like that fellow in the Forty
+Thieves," Ripton hazarded a pleasantry which met with no response.
+
+Betrayed by his instincts, the magic slaves of Love! The hero
+heavily descended the steps.
+
+Ripton murmured that they were done for. His commander turned on
+him, and said: "Take all the houses on the opposite side, one after
+another. I'll take these." With a wry face Ripton crossed the road,
+altogether subdued by Richard's native superiority to adverse
+circumstances.
+
+Then were families aroused. Then did mortals dimly guess that
+something portentous was abroad. Then were labourers all day in the
+vineyard, harshly wakened from their evening's nap. Hope and Fear
+stalked the street, as again and again the loud companion summonses
+resounded. Finally Ripton sang out cheerfully. He had Mrs. Berry
+before him, profuse of mellow curtsies.
+
+Richard ran to her and caught her hands: "She's well?--upstairs?"
+
+"Oh, quite well! only a trifle tired with her journey, and
+fluttering-like," Mrs. Berry replied to Ripton alone. The lover had
+flown aloft.
+
+The wise woman sagely ushered Ripton into her own private parlour,
+there to wait till he was wanted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+CONTAINS AN INTERCESSION FOR THE HEROINE
+
+
+"In all cases where two have joined to commit an offence, punish one
+of the two lightly," is the dictum of THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is possible for young heads to conceive proper plans of action,
+and occasionally, by sheer force of will, to check the wild horses
+that are ever fretting to gallop off with them. But when they have
+given the reins and the whip to another, what are they to do? They
+may go down on their knees, and beg and pray the furious charioteer
+to stop, or moderate his pace. Alas! each fresh thing they do
+redoubles his ardour. There is a power in their troubled beauty
+women learn the use of, and what wonder? They have seen it kindle
+Ilium to flames so often! But ere they grow matronly in the house of
+Menelaus, they weep, and implore, and do not, in truth, know how
+terribly two-edged is their gift of loveliness. They resign
+themselves to an incomprehensible frenzy; pleasant to them, because
+they attribute it to excessive love. And so the very sensible things
+which they can and do say, are vain.
+
+I reckon it absurd to ask them to be quite in earnest. Are not those
+their own horses in yonder team? Certainly, if they were quite in
+earnest, they might soon have my gentleman as sober as a carter. A
+hundred different ways of disenchanting him exist, and Adrian will
+point you out one or two that shall be instantly efficacious. For
+Love, the charioteer, is easily tripped, while honest jog-trot Love
+keeps his legs to the end. Granted dear women are not quite in
+earnest, still the mere words they utter should be put to their good
+account. They do mean them, though their hearts are set the wrong
+way. 'Tis a despairing, pathetic homage to the judgment of the
+majority, in whose faces they are flying. Punish Helen, very young,
+lightly. After a certain age you may select her for special
+chastisement. An innocent with Theseus, with Paris she is an
+advanced incendiary.
+
+The fair young girl was sitting as her lover had left her; trying to
+recall her stunned senses. Her bonnet was unremoved, her hands
+clasped on her knees; dry tears in her eyes. Like a dutiful slave,
+she rose to him. And first he claimed her mouth. There was a speech,
+made up of all the pretty wisdom her wild situation and true love
+could gather, awaiting him there; but his kiss scattered it to
+fragments. She dropped to her seat weeping, and hiding her shamed
+cheeks.
+
+By his silence she divined his thoughts, and took his hand and drew
+it to her lips.
+
+He bent beside her, bidding her look at him.
+
+"Keep your eyes so."
+
+She could not.
+
+"Do you fear me, Lucy?"
+
+A throbbing pressure answered him.
+
+"Do you love me, darling?"
+
+She trembled from head to foot.
+
+"Then why do you turn from me?"
+
+She wept: "O Richard, take me home! take me home!"
+
+"Look at me, Lucy!"
+
+Her head shrank timidly round.
+
+"Keep your eyes on me, darling! Now speak!"
+
+But she could not look and speak too. The lover knew his mastery
+when he had her eyes.
+
+"You wish me to take you home?"
+
+She faltered: "O Richard? it is not too late."
+
+"You regret what you have done for me?"
+
+"Dearest! it is ruin."
+
+"You weep because you have consented to be mine?"
+
+"Not for me! O Richard!"
+
+"For me you weep? Look at me! For me?"
+
+"How will it end! O Richard!"
+
+"You weep for me?"
+
+"Dearest! I would die for you!"
+
+"Would you see me indifferent to everything in the world? Would you
+have me lost? Do you think I will live another day in England
+without you? I have staked all I have on you, Lucy. You have nearly
+killed me once. A second time, and the earth will not be troubled by
+me. You ask me to wait, when they are plotting against us on all
+sides? Darling Lucy! look on me. Fix your fond eyes on me. You ask
+me to wait when here you are given to me--when you have proved my
+faith--when we know we love as none have loved. Give me your eyes!
+Let them tell me I have your heart!"
+
+Where was her wise little speech? How could she match such mighty
+eloquence? She sought to collect a few more of the scattered
+fragments.
+
+"Dearest! your father may be brought to consent by and by, and
+then--oh! if you take me home now"----
+
+The lover stood up. "He who has been arranging that fine scheme to
+disgrace and martyrize you? True, as I live! that's the reason of
+their having you back. Your old servant heard him and your uncle
+discussing it. He!--Lucy! he's a good man, but he must not step in
+between you and me. I say God has given you to me."
+
+He was down by her side again, his arms enfolding her.
+
+She had hoped to fight a better battle than in the morning, and she
+was weaker and softer.
+
+Ah! why should she doubt that his great love was the first law to
+her? Why should she not believe that she would wreck him by
+resisting? And if she suffered, oh sweet to think it was for his
+sake! Sweet to shut out wisdom; accept total blindness, and be led
+by him!
+
+The hag Wisdom annoyed them little further. She rustled her garments
+ominously, and vanished.
+
+"Oh, my own Richard!" the fair girl just breathed.
+
+He whispered, "Call me that name."
+
+She blushed deeply.
+
+"Call me that name," he repeated. "You said it once to-day."
+
+"Dearest!"
+
+"Not that."
+
+"O darling!"
+
+"Not that."
+
+"Husband!"
+
+She was won. The rosy gate from which the word had issued was closed
+with a seal.
+
+Ripton did not enjoy his introduction to the caged bird of beauty
+that night. He received a lesson in the art of pumping from the
+worthy landlady below, up to an hour when she yawned, and he
+blinked, and their common candle wore with dignity the brigand's hat
+of midnight, and cocked a drunken eye at them from under it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+RELATES HOW PREPARATIONS FOR ACTION WERE CONDUCTED UNDER THE APRIL
+OF LOVERS
+
+
+Beauty, of course, is for the hero. Nevertheless, it is not always
+he on whom beauty works its most conquering influence. It is the
+dull commonplace man into whose slow brain she drops like a
+celestial light, and burns lastingly. The poet, for instance, is a
+connoisseur of beauty: to the artist she is a model. These gentlemen
+by much contemplation of her charms wax critical. The days when they
+had hearts being gone, they are haply divided between the blonde and
+the brunette; the aquiline nose and the Proserpine; this shaped eye
+and that. But go about among simple unprofessional fellows, boors,
+dunderheads, and here and there you shall find some barbarous
+intelligence which has had just enough to conceive, and has taken
+Beauty as its Goddess, and knows but one form to worship, in its
+poor stupid fashion, and would perish for her. Nay, more: the man
+would devote all his days to her, though he is dumb as a dog. And,
+indeed, he is Beauty's Dog. Almost every Beauty has her Dog. The
+hero possesses her; the poet proclaims her; the painter puts her
+upon canvas; and the faithful Old Dog follows her: and the end of it
+all is that the faithful Old Dog is her single attendant. Sir Hero
+is revelling in the wars, or in Armida's bowers; Mr. Poet has spied
+a wrinkle; the brush is for the rose in its season. She turns to her
+Old Dog then. She hugs him; and he, who has subsisted on a bone and
+a pat till there he squats decrepit, he turns his grateful old eyes
+up to her, and has not a notion that she is hugging sad memories in
+him: Hero, Poet, Painter, in one scrubby one! Then is she buried,
+and the village hears languid howls, and there is a paragraph in the
+newspapers concerning the extraordinary fidelity of an Old Dog.
+
+Excited by suggestive recollections of Nooredeen and the Fair
+Persian, and the change in the obscure monotony of his life by his
+having quarters in a crack hotel, and living familiarly with
+West-End people--living on the fat of the land (which forms a stout
+portion of an honest youth's romance), Ripton Thompson breakfasted
+next morning with his chief at half-past eight. The meal had been
+fixed overnight for seven, but Ripton slept a great deal more than
+the nightingale, and (to chronicle his exact state) even half-past
+eight rather afflicted his new aristocratic senses and reminded him
+too keenly of law and bondage. He had preferred to breakfast at
+Algernon's hour, who had left word for eleven. Him, however, it was
+Richard's object to avoid, so they fell to, and Ripton no longer
+envied Hippias in bed. Breakfast done, they bequeathed the consoling
+information for Algernon that they were off to hear a popular
+preacher, and departed.
+
+"How happy everybody looks!" said Richard, in the quiet Sunday
+streets.
+
+"Yes--jolly!" said Ripton.
+
+"When I'm--when this is over, I'll see that they are, too--as many
+as I can make happy," said the hero; adding softly: "Her blind was
+down at a quarter to six. I think she slept well!"
+
+"You've been there this morning?" Ripton exclaimed; and an idea of
+what love was dawned upon his dull brain.
+
+"Will she see me, Ricky?"
+
+"Yes. She'll see you to-day. She was tired last night."
+
+"Positively?"
+
+Richard assured him that the privilege would be his.
+
+"Here," he said, coming under some trees in the park, "here's where
+I talked to you last night. What a time it seems! How I hate the
+night!"
+
+On the way, that Richard might have an exalted opinion of him,
+Ripton hinted decorously at a somewhat intimate and mysterious
+acquaintance with the sex. Headings of certain random adventures he
+gave.
+
+"Well!" said his chief, "why not marry her?"
+
+Then was Ripton shocked, and cried, "Oh!" and had a taste of the
+feeling of superiority, destined that day to be crushed utterly.
+
+He was again deposited in Mrs. Berry's charge for a term that caused
+him dismal fears that the Fair Persian still refused to show her
+face, but Richard called out to him, and up Ripton went, unaware of
+the transformation he was to undergo. Hero and Beauty stood together
+to receive him. From the bottom of the stairs he had his vivaciously
+agreeable smile ready for them, and by the time he entered the room
+his cheeks were painfully stiff, and his eyes had strained beyond
+their exact meaning. Lucy, with one hand anchored to her lover,
+welcomed him kindly. He relieved her shyness by looking so extremely
+silly. They sat down, and tried to commence a conversation, but
+Ripton was as little master of his tongue as he was of his eyes.
+After an interval, the Fair Persian having done duty by showing
+herself, was glad to quit the room. Her lord and possessor then
+turned inquiringly to Ripton.
+
+"You don't wonder now, Rip?" he said.
+
+"No, Richard!" Ripton waited to reply with sufficient solemnity,
+"indeed I don't!"
+
+He spoke differently; he looked differently. He had the Old Dog's
+eyes in his head. They watched the door she had passed through; they
+listened for her, as dogs' eyes do. When she came in, bonneted for a
+walk, his agitation was dog-like. When she hung on her lover
+timidly, and went forth, he followed without an idea of envy, or
+anything save the secret raptures the sight of her gave him, which
+are the Old Dog's own. For beneficent Nature requites him. His
+sensations cannot be heroic, but they have a fulness and a wagging
+delight as good in their way. And this capacity for humble
+unaspiring worship has its peculiar guerdon. When Ripton comes to
+think of Miss Random now, what will he think of himself? Let no one
+despise the Old Dog. Through him doth Beauty vindicate her sex.
+
+It did not please Ripton that others should have the bliss of
+beholding her, and as, to his perceptions, everybody did, and
+observed her offensively, and stared, and turned their heads back,
+and interchanged comments on her, and became in a minute madly in
+love with her, he had to smother low growls. They strolled about the
+pleasant gardens of Kensington all the morning, under the young
+chestnut buds, and round the windless waters, talking, and soothing
+the wild excitement of their hearts. If Lucy spoke, Ripton pricked
+up his ears. She, too, made the remark that everybody seemed to look
+happy, and he heard it with thrills of joy. "So everybody is, where
+you are!" he would have wished to say, if he dared, but was
+restrained by fears that his burning eloquence would commit him.
+Ripton knew the people he met twice. It would have been difficult to
+persuade him they were the creatures of accident.
+
+From the Gardens, in contempt of Ripton's frowned protest, Richard
+boldly struck into the park, where solitary carriages were beginning
+to perform the circuit. Here Ripton had some justification for his
+jealous pangs. The young girl's golden locks of hair; her sweet, now
+dreamily sad, face; her gentle graceful figure in the black straight
+dress she wore; a sort of half-conventional air she had--a mark of
+something not of class, that was partly beauty's, partly maiden
+innocence growing conscious, partly remorse at her weakness and dim
+fear of the future it was sowing--did attract the eye-glasses.
+Ripton had to learn that eyes are bearable, but eye-glasses an
+abomination. They fixed a spell upon his courage; for somehow the
+youth had always ranked them as emblems of our nobility, and hearing
+two exquisite eye-glasses, who had been to front and rear several
+times, drawl in gibberish generally imputed to lords, that his
+heroine was a charming little creature, just the size, but had no
+style,--he was abashed; he did not fly at them and tear them. He
+became dejected. Beauty's dog is affected by the eye-glass in a
+manner not unlike the common animal's terror of the human eye.
+
+Richard appeared to hear nothing, or it was homage that he heard. He
+repeated to Lucy Diaper Sandoe's verses--
+
+    "The cockneys nod to each other aside,
+    The coxcombs lift their glasses,"
+
+and projected hiring a horse for her to ride every day in the park,
+and shine among the highest.
+
+They had turned to the West, against the sky glittering through the
+bare trees across the water, and the bright-edged rack. The lover,
+his imagination just then occupied in clothing earthly glories in
+celestial, felt where his senses were sharpest the hand of his
+darling falter, and instinctively looked ahead. His uncle Algernon
+was leisurely jolting towards them on his one sound leg. The
+dismembered Guardsman talked to a friend whose arm supported him,
+and speculated from time to time on the fair ladies driving by. The
+two white faces passed him unobserved. Unfortunately Ripton, coming
+behind, went plump upon the Captain's live toe--or so he pretended,
+crying, "Confound it, Mr. Thompson! you might have chosen the
+other."
+
+The horrible apparition did confound Ripton, who stammered that it
+was extraordinary.
+
+"Not at all," said Algernon. "Everybody makes up to that fellow.
+Instinct, I suppose!"
+
+He had not to ask for his nephew. Richard turned to face the matter.
+
+"Sorry I couldn't wait for you this morning, uncle," he said, with
+the coolness of relationship. "I thought you never walked so far."
+
+His voice was in perfect tone--the heroic mask admirable.
+
+Algernon examined the downcast visage at his side, and contrived to
+allude to the popular preacher. He was instantly introduced to
+Ripton's sister, Miss Thompson.
+
+The Captain bowed, smiling melancholy approval of his nephew's
+choice of a minister. After a few stray remarks, and an affable
+salute to Miss Thompson, he hobbled away, and then the three sealed
+volcanoes breathed, and Lucy's arm ceased to be squeezed quite so
+much up to the heroic pitch.
+
+This incident quickened their steps homeward to the sheltering wings
+of Mrs. Berry. All that passed between them on the subject comprised
+a stammered excuse from Ripton for his conduct, and a good-humoured
+rejoinder from Richard, that he had gained a sister by it: at which
+Ripton ventured to wish aloud Miss Desborough would only think so,
+and a faint smile twitched poor Lucy's lips to please him. She
+hardly had strength to reach her cage. She had none to eat of Mrs.
+Berry's nice little dinner. To be alone, that she might cry and ease
+her heart of its accusing weight of tears, was all she prayed for.
+Kind Mrs. Berry, slipping into her bedroom to take off her things,
+found the fair body in a fevered shudder, and finished by undressing
+her completely and putting her to bed.
+
+"Just an hour's sleep, or so," the mellifluous woman explained the
+case to the two anxious gentlemen. "A quiet sleep and a cup of warm
+tea goes for more than twenty doctors, it do--when there's the
+flutters," she pursued. "I know it by myself. And a good cry
+before-hand's better than the best of medicine."
+
+She nursed them into a make-believe of eating, and retired to her
+softer charge and sweeter babe, reflecting, "Lord! Lord! the three
+of 'em don't make fifty! I'm as old as two and a half of 'em, to say
+the least." Mrs. Berry used her apron, and by virtue of their tender
+years took them all three into her heart.
+
+Left alone, neither of the young men could swallow a morsel.
+
+"Did you see the change come over her?" Richard whispered.
+
+Ripton fiercely accused his prodigious stupidity.
+
+The lover flung down his knife and fork: "What could I do? If I had
+said nothing, we should have been suspected. I was obliged to speak.
+And she hates a lie! See! it has struck her down. God forgive me!"
+
+Ripton affected a serene mind: "It was a fright, Richard," he said.
+"That's what Mrs. Berry means by flutters. Those old women talk in
+that way. You heard what she said. And these old women know. I'll
+tell you what it is. It's this, Richard!--it's because you've got a
+fool for your friend!"
+
+"She regrets it," muttered the lover. "Good God! I think she fears
+me." He dropped his face in his hands.
+
+Ripton went to the window, repeating energetically for his comfort:
+"It's because you've got a fool for your friend!"
+
+Sombre grew the street they had last night aroused. The sun was
+buried alive in cloud. Ripton saw himself no more in the opposite
+window. He watched the deplorable objects passing on the pavement.
+His aristocratic visions had gone like his breakfast. Beauty had
+been struck down by his egregious folly, and there he stood--a
+wretch!
+
+Richard came to him: "Don't mumble on like that, Rip!" he said.
+"Nobody blames you."
+
+"Ah! you're very kind, Richard," interposed the wretch, moved at the
+face of misery he beheld.
+
+"Listen to me, Rip! I shall take her home to-night. Yes! If she's
+happier away from me!--do you think me a brute, Ripton? Rather than
+have her shed a tear, I'd!----I'll take her home to-night!"
+
+Ripton suggested that it was sudden; adding from his larger
+experience, people perhaps might talk.
+
+The lover could not understand what they should talk about, but he
+said: "If I give him who came for her yesterday the clue? If no one
+sees or hears of me, what can they say? O Rip! I'll give her up. I'm
+wrecked for ever! What of that? Yes--let them take her! The world in
+arms should never have torn her from me, but when she cries--Yes!
+all's over. I'll find him at once."
+
+He searched in out-of-the-way corners for the hat of resolve. Ripton
+looked on, wretcheder than ever.
+
+The idea struck him:--"Suppose, Richard, she doesn't want to go?"
+
+It was a moment when, perhaps, one who sided with parents and
+guardians and the old wise world, might have inclined them to pursue
+their righteous wretched course, and have given small Cupid a smack
+and sent him home to his naughty Mother. Alas! (it is THE PILGRIM'S
+SCRIP interjecting) women are the born accomplices of mischief! In
+bustles Mrs. Berry to clear away the refection, and find the two
+knights helmed, and sees, though 'tis dusk, that they wear doubtful
+brows, and guesses bad things for her dear God Hymen in a twinkling.
+
+"Dear! dear!" she exclaimed, "and neither of you eaten a scrap! And
+there's my dear young lady off into the prettiest sleep you ever
+see!"
+
+"Ha?" cried the lover, illuminated.
+
+"Soft as a baby!" Mrs. Berry averred. "I went to look at her this
+very moment, and there's not a bit of trouble in her breath. It come
+and it go like the sweetest regular instrument ever made. The Black
+Ox haven't trod on _her_ foot yet! Most like it was the air of
+London. But only fancy, if you had called in a doctor! Why, I
+shouldn't have let her take any of his quackery. Now, there!"
+
+Ripton attentively observed his chief, and saw him doff his hat with
+a curious caution, and peer into its recess, from which, during Mrs.
+Berry's speech, he drew forth a little glove--dropped there by some
+freak of chance.
+
+"Keep me, keep me, now you have me!" sang the little glove, and
+amused the lover with a thousand conceits.
+
+"When will she wake, do you think, Mrs. Berry?" he asked.
+
+"Oh! we mustn't go for disturbing her," said the guileful good
+creature. "Bless ye! let her sleep it out. And if you young
+gentlemen was to take my advice, and go and take a walk for to get a
+appetite--everybody should eat! it's their sacred duty, no matter
+what their feelings be! and I say it who'm no chicken!--I'll
+frickashee this--which is a chicken--against your return. I'm a
+cook, I can assure ye!"
+
+The lover seized her two hands. "You're the best old soul in the
+world!" he cried. Mrs. Berry appeared willing to kiss him. "We won't
+disturb her. Let her sleep. Keep her in bed, Mrs. Berry. Will you?
+And we'll call to inquire after her this evening, and come and see
+her to-morrow. I'm sure you'll be kind to her. There! there!" Mrs.
+Berry was preparing to whimper. "I trust her to you, you see.
+Good-bye, you dear old soul."
+
+He smuggled a handful of gold into her keeping, and went to dine
+with his uncles, happy and hungry.
+
+Before they reached the hotel, they had agreed to draw Mrs. Berry
+into their confidence, telling her (with embellishments) all save
+their names, so that they might enjoy the counsel and assistance of
+that trump of a woman, and yet have nothing to fear from her. Lucy
+was to receive the name of Letitia, Ripton's youngest and
+best-looking sister. The heartless fellow proposed it in cruel
+mockery of an old weakness of hers.
+
+"Letitia!" mused Richard. "I like the name. Both begin with L.
+There's something soft--womanlike--in the L.'s."
+
+Material Ripton remarked that they looked like pounds on paper. The
+lover roamed through his golden groves. "Lucy Feverel! that sounds
+better! I wonder where Ralph is. I should like to help him. He's in
+love with my cousin Clare. He'll never do anything till he marries.
+No man can. I'm going to do a hundred things when it's over. We
+shall travel first. I want to see the Alps. One doesn't know what
+the earth is till one has seen the Alps. What a delight it will be
+to her! I fancy I see her eyes gazing up at them.
+
+    'And oh, your dear blue eyes, that heavenward glance
+      With kindred beauty, banished humbleness,
+       Past weeping for mortality's distress--
+    Yet from your soul a tear hangs there in trance,
+          And fills, but does not fall;
+          Softly I hear it call
+    At heaven's gate, till Sister Seraphs press
+    To look on you their old love from the skies:
+    Those are the eyes of Seraphs bright on your blue eyes!'
+
+Beautiful! These lines, Rip, were written by a man who was once a
+friend of my father's. I intend to find him and make them friends
+again. You don't care for poetry. It's no use your trying to swallow
+it, Rip!"
+
+"It sounds very nice," said Ripton, modestly shutting his mouth.
+
+"The Alps! Italy! Rome! and then I shall go to the East," the hero
+continued. "She's ready to go anywhere with me, the dear brave
+heart! Oh, the glorious golden East! I dream of the desert. I dream
+I'm chief of an Arab tribe, and we fly all white in the moonlight on
+our mares, and hurry to the rescue of my darling! And we push the
+spears, and we scatter them, and I come to the tent where she
+crouches, and catch her to my saddle, and away!--Rip! what a life!"
+
+Ripton strove to imagine he could enjoy it.
+
+"And then we shall come home, and I shall lead Austin's life, with
+her to help me. First be virtuous, Rip! and then serve your country
+heart and soul. A wise man told me that. I think I shall do
+something."
+
+Sunshine and cloud, cloud and sunshine, passed over the lover. Now
+life was a narrow ring; now the distances extended, were winged,
+flew illimitably. An hour ago and food was hateful. Now he manfully
+refreshed his nature, and joined in Algernon's encomiums on Miss
+Letitia Thompson.
+
+Meantime Beauty slept, watched by the veteran volunteer of the
+hero's band. Lucy awoke from dreams which seemed reality, to the
+reality which was a dream. She awoke calling for some friend,
+"Margaret!" and heard one say, "My name is Bessy Berry, my love! not
+Margaret." Then she asked piteously where she was, and where was
+Margaret, her dear friend, and Mrs. Berry whispered, "Sure you've
+got a dearer!"
+
+"Ah!" sighed Lucy, sinking on her pillow, overwhelmed by the
+strangeness of her state.
+
+Mrs. Berry closed the frill of her nightgown and adjusted the
+bedclothes quietly.
+
+Her name was breathed.
+
+"Yes, my love?" she said.
+
+"Is he here?"
+
+"He's gone, my dear."
+
+"Gone?--Oh, where?" The young girl started up in disorder.
+
+"Gone, to be back, my love! Ah! that young gentleman!" Mrs. Berry
+chanted: "Not a morsel have he eat; not a drop have he drunk!"
+
+"O Mrs. Berry! why did you not make him?" Lucy wept for the
+famine-struck hero, who was just then feeding mightily.
+
+Mrs. Berry explained that to make one eat who thought the darling
+of his heart like to die, was a sheer impossibility for the
+cleverest of women; and on this deep truth Lucy reflected, with her
+eyes wide at the candle. She wanted one to pour her feelings out to.
+She slid her hand from under the bedclothes, and took Mrs. Berry's,
+and kissed it. The good creature required no further avowal of her
+secret, but forthwith leaned her consummate bosom to the pillow, and
+petitioned heaven to bless them both!--Then the little bride was
+alarmed, and wondered how Mrs. Berry could have guessed it.
+
+"Why," said Mrs. Berry, "your love is out of your eyes, and out of
+everything ye do." And the little bride wondered more. She thought
+she had been so very cautious not to betray it. The common woman in
+them made cheer together after their own April fashion. Following
+which Mrs. Berry probed for the sweet particulars of this beautiful
+love-match; but the little bride's lips were locked. She only said
+her lover was above her in station.
+
+"And you're a Catholic, my dear!"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Berry!"
+
+"And him a Protestant."
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Berry!"
+
+"Dear, dear!--And why shouldn't ye be?" she ejaculated, seeing
+sadness return to the bridal babe. "So as you was born, so shall ye
+be! But you'll have to make your arrangements about the children.
+The girls to worship with you, the boys with him. It's the same God,
+my dear! You mustn't blush at it, though you do look so pretty. If
+my young gentleman could see you now!"
+
+"Please, Mrs. Berry!" Lucy murmured.
+
+"Why, he will, you know, my dear!"
+
+"Oh, please, Mrs. Berry!"
+
+"And you that can't bear the thoughts of it! Well, I do wish there
+was fathers and mothers on both sides and dockments signed, and
+bridesmaids, and a breakfast! but love is love, and ever will be, in
+spite of them."
+
+She made other and deeper dives into the little heart, but though
+she drew up pearls, they were not of the kind she searched for. The
+one fact that hung as a fruit upon her tree of Love, Lucy had given
+her; she would not, in fealty to her lover, reveal its growth and
+history, however sadly she yearned to pour out all to this dear old
+Mother Confessor.
+
+Her conduct drove Mrs. Berry from the rosy to the autumnal view of
+matrimony, generally heralded by the announcement that it is a
+lottery.
+
+"And when you see your ticket," said Mrs. Berry, "you shan't know
+whether it's a prize or a blank. And, Lord knows! some go on
+thinking it's a prize when it turns on 'em and tears 'em. I'm one of
+the blanks, my dear! I drew a blank in Berry. He was a black Berry
+to me, my dear! Smile away! he truly was, and I a-prizin' him as
+proud as you can conceive! My dear!" Mrs. Berry pressed her hands
+flat on her apron. "We hadn't been a three months man and wife, when
+that man--it wasn't the honeymoon, which some can't say--that
+man--Yes! he kicked me. His wedded wife he kicked! Ah!" she sighed
+to Lucy's large eyes, "I could have borne that. A blow don't touch
+the heart," the poor creature tapped her sensitive side. "I went on
+loving of him, for I'm a soft one. Tall as a Grenadier he is, and
+when out of service grows his moustache. I used to call him my
+body-guardsman--like a Queen! I flattered him like the fools we
+women are. For, take my word for it, my dear, there's nothing here
+below so vain as a man! That I know. But I didn't deserve it.... I'm
+a superior cook.... I did not deserve that noways." Mrs. Berry
+thumped her knee, and accentuated up her climax: "I mended his
+linen. I saw to his adornments--he called his clothes, the bad man!
+I was a servant to him, my dear! and there--it was nine months--nine
+months from the day he swear to protect and cherish and that--nine
+calendar months, and my gentleman is off with another woman! Bone of
+his bone!--pish!" exclaimed Mrs. Berry, reckoning her wrongs over
+vividly. "Here's my ring. A pretty ornament! What do it mean? I'm
+for tearin' it off my finger a dozen times in the day. It's a
+symbol? I call it a tomfoolery for the dead-alive to wear it, that's
+a widow and not a widow, and haven't got a name for what she is in
+any Dixonary. I've looked, my dear, and"--she spread out her
+arms--"Johnson haven't got a name for me!"
+
+At this impressive woe Mrs. Berry's voice quavered into sobs. Lucy
+spoke gentle words to the poor outcast from Johnson. The sorrows of
+Autumn have no warning for April. The little bride, for all her
+tender pity, felt happier when she had heard her landlady's moving
+tale of the wickedness of man, which cast in bright relief the glory
+of that one hero who was hers. Then from a short flight of
+inconceivable bliss, she fell, shot by one on her hundred Argus-eyed
+fears.
+
+"O Mrs. Berry! I'm so young! Think of me--only just seventeen!"
+
+Mrs. Berry immediately dried her eyes to radiance. "Young, my dear!
+Nonsense! There's no so much harm in being young, here and there. I
+knew an Irish lady was married at fourteen. Her daughter married
+close over fourteen. She was a grandmother by thirty! When any
+strange man began, she used to ask him what pattern caps
+grandmothers wore. They'd stare! Bless you! the grandmother could
+have married over and over again. It was her daughter's fault, not
+hers, you know."
+
+"She was three years younger," mused Lucy.
+
+"She married beneath her, my dear. Ran off with her father's
+bailiff's son. 'Ah, Berry!' she'd say, 'if I hadn't been foolish, I
+should be my lady now--not Granny!' Her father never forgave
+her--left all his estates out of the family."
+
+"Did her husband always love her?" Lucy preferred to know.
+
+"In his way, my dear, he did," said Mrs. Berry, coming upon her
+matrimonial wisdom. "He couldn't help himself. If he left off, he
+began again. She was so clever, and did make him so comfortable.
+Cook! there wasn't such another cook out of a Alderman's kitchen;
+no, indeed! And she a born lady! That tells ye it's the duty of all
+women! She had her saying--'When the parlour fire gets low, put
+coals on the ketchen fire!' and a good saying it is to treasure.
+Such is man! no use in havin' their hearts if ye don't have their
+stomachs."
+
+Perceiving that she grew abstruse, Mrs. Berry added briskly: "You
+know nothing about that yet, my dear. Only mind me and mark me:
+don't neglect your cookery. Kissing don't last: cookery do!"
+
+Here, with an aphorism worthy a place in THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP, she
+broke off to go posseting for her dear invalid. Lucy was quite well;
+very eager to be allowed to rise and be ready when the knock should
+come. Mrs. Berry, in her loving considerateness for the little
+bride, positively commanded her to lie down, and be quiet, and
+submit to be nursed and cherished. For Mrs. Berry well knew that ten
+minutes alone with the hero could only be had while the little bride
+was in that unattainable position.
+
+Thanks to her strategy, as she thought, her object was gained. The
+night did not pass before she learnt, from the hero's own mouth,
+that Mr. Richards, the father of the hero, and a stern lawyer, was
+averse to his union with this young lady he loved, because of a ward
+of his, heiress to an immense property, whom he desired his son to
+espouse; and because his darling Letitia was a Catholic--Letitia,
+the sole daughter of a brave naval officer deceased, and in the
+hands of a savage uncle, who wanted to sacrifice this beauty to a
+brute of a son. Mrs. Berry listened credulously to the emphatic
+narrative, and spoke to the effect that the wickedness of old people
+formed the excuse for the wildness of young ones. The ceremonious
+administration of oaths of secrecy and devotion over, she was
+enrolled in the hero's band, which now numbered three, and entered
+upon the duties with feminine energy, for there are no conspirators
+like women. Ripton's lieutenancy became a sinecure, his rank merely
+titular. He had never been married--he knew nothing about licences,
+except that they must be obtained, and were not difficult--he had
+not an idea that so many days' warning must be given to the
+clergyman of the parish where one of the parties was resident. How
+should he? All his forethought was comprised in the ring, and
+whenever the discussion of arrangements for the great event grew
+particularly hot and important, he would say, with a shrewd nod: "We
+mustn't forget the ring, you know, Mrs. Berry!" and the new member
+was only prevented by natural complacence from shouting: "Oh, drat
+ye! and your ring, too." Mrs. Berry had acted conspicuously in
+fifteen marriages, by banns, and by licence, and to have such an
+obvious requisite dinned in her ears was exasperating. They could
+not have contracted alliance with an auxiliary more invaluable, an
+authority so profound; and they acknowledged it to themselves. The
+hero marched like an automaton at her bidding; Lieutenant Thompson
+was rejoiced to perform services as errand-boy in the enterprise.
+
+"It's in hopes you'll be happier than me, I do it," said the devout
+and charitable Berry. "Marriages is made in heaven, they say; and if
+that's the case, I say they don't take much account of us below!"
+
+Her own woful experiences had been given to the hero in exchange for
+his story of cruel parents.
+
+Richard vowed to her that he would henceforth hold it a duty to hunt
+out the wanderer from wedded bonds, and bring him back bound and
+suppliant.
+
+"Oh, he'll come!" said Mrs. Berry, pursing prophetic wrinkles:
+"he'll come of his own accord. Never anywheres will he meet such a
+cook as Bessy Berry! And he know her value in his heart of hearts.
+And I do believe, when he do come, I shall be opening these arms to
+him again, and not slapping his impidence in the face--I'm that
+soft! I always was--in matrimony, Mr. Richards!"
+
+As when nations are secretly preparing for war, the docks and
+arsenals hammer night and day, and busy contractors measure time by
+inches, and the air hums around for leagues as it were myriads of
+bees, so the house and neighbourhood of the matrimonial soft one
+resounded in the heroic style, and knew little of the changes of
+light decreed by Creation. Mrs. Berry was the general of the hour.
+Down to Doctors' Commons she expedited the hero, instructing him how
+boldly to face the Law, and fib: for that the Law never could resist
+a fib and a bold face. Down the hero went, and proclaimed his
+presence. And lo! the Law danced to him its sedatest lovely
+bear's-dance. Think ye the Law less susceptible to him than flesh
+and blood? With a beautiful confidence it put the few familiar
+questions to him, and nodded to his replies: then stamped the bond,
+and took the fee. It must be an old vagabond at heart that can
+permit the irrevocable to go so cheap, even to a hero. For only mark
+him when he is petitioned by heroes and heroines to undo what he
+does so easily! That small archway of Doctors' Commons seems the eye
+of a needle, through which the lean purse has a way, somehow, of
+slipping more readily than the portly; but once through, all are
+camels alike, the lean purse an especially big camel. Dispensing
+tremendous marriage as it does, the Law can have no conscience.
+
+"I hadn't the slightest difficulty," said the exulting hero.
+
+"Of course not!" returns Mrs. Berry. "It's as easy, if ye're in
+earnest, as buying a plum bun."
+
+Likewise the ambassador of the hero went to claim the promise of the
+Church to be in attendance on a certain spot, on a certain day, and
+there hear oath of eternal fealty, and gird him about with all its
+forces: which the Church, receiving a wink from the Law,
+obsequiously engaged to do, for less than the price of a plum-cake.
+
+Meantime, while craftsmen and skilled women, directed by Mrs. Berry,
+were toiling to deck the day at hand, Raynham and Belthorpe
+slept,--the former soundly; and one day was as another to them.
+Regularly every morning a letter arrived from Richard to his father,
+containing observations on the phenomena of London; remarks (mainly
+cynical) on the speeches and acts of Parliament; and reasons for not
+having yet been able to call on the Grandisons. They were certainly
+rather monotonous and spiritless. The baronet did not complain. That
+cold dutiful tone assured him there was no internal trouble or
+distraction. "The letters of a healthful physique!" he said to Lady
+Blandish, with sure insight. Complacently he sat and smiled, little
+witting that his son's ordeal was imminent, and that his son's
+ordeal was to be his own. Hippias wrote that his nephew was killing
+him by making appointments which he never kept, and altogether
+neglecting him in the most shameless way, so that his ganglionic
+centre was in a ten times worse state than when he left Raynham. He
+wrote very bitterly, but it was hard to feel compassion for his
+offended stomach.
+
+On the other hand, young Tom Blaize was not forthcoming, and had
+despatched no tidings whatever. Farmer Blaize smoked his pipe
+evening after evening, vastly disturbed. London was a large
+place--young Tom might be lost in it, he thought; and young Tom had
+his weaknesses. A wolf at Belthorpe, he was likely to be a sheep in
+London, as yokels have proved. But what had become of Lucy? This
+consideration almost sent Farmer Blaize off to London direct, and
+he would have gone had not his pipe enlightened him. A young fellow
+might play truant and get into a scrape, but a young man and a young
+woman were sure to be heard of, _unless_ they were acting in
+complicity. Why, of course, young Tom had behaved like a man, the
+rascal! and married her outright there, while he had the chance. It
+was a long guess. Still it was the only reasonable way of accounting
+for his extraordinary silence, and therefore the farmer held to it
+that he had done the deed. He argued as modern men do who think the
+hero, the upsetter of ordinary calculations, is gone from us. So,
+after despatching a letter to a friend in town to be on the outlook
+for son Tom, he continued awhile to smoke his pipe, rather elated
+than not, and mused on the shrewd manner he should adopt when Master
+Honeymoon did appear.
+
+Toward the middle of the second week of Richard's absence, Tom
+Bakewell came to Raynham for Cassandra, and privately handed a
+letter to the Eighteenth Century, containing a request for money,
+and a round sum. The Eighteenth Century was as good as her word, and
+gave Tom a letter in return, enclosing a cheque on her bankers,
+amply providing to keep the heroic engine in motion at a moderate
+pace. Tom went back, and Raynham and Lobourne slept and dreamed not
+of the morrow. The System, wedded to Time, slept, and knew not how
+he had been outraged--anticipated by seven pregnant seasons. For
+Time had heard the hero swear to that legalizing instrument, and had
+also registered an oath. Ah me! venerable Hebrew Time! he is
+unforgiving. Half the confusion and fever of the world comes of this
+vendetta he declares against the hapless innocents who have once
+done him a wrong. They cannot escape him. They will never outlive
+it. The father of jokes, he is himself no joke; which it seems the
+business of men to discover.
+
+The days roll round. He is their servant now. Mrs. Berry has a new
+satin gown, a beautiful bonnet, a gold brooch, and sweet gloves,
+presented to her by the hero, wherein to stand by his bride at the
+altar to-morrow; and, instead of being an old wary hen, she is as
+much a chicken as any of the party, such has been the magic of these
+articles. Fathers she sees accepting the facts produced for them by
+their children; a world content to be carved out as it pleases the
+hero.
+
+At last Time brings the bridal eve, and is blest as a benefactor.
+The final arrangements are made; the bridegroom does depart; and
+Mrs. Berry lights the little bride to her bed. Lucy stops on the
+landing where there is an old clock eccentrically correct that
+night. 'Tis the palpitating pause before the gates of her
+transfiguration. Mrs. Berry sees her put her rosy finger on the ONE
+about to strike, and touch all the hours successively till she comes
+to the TWELVE that shall sound "Wife" in her ears on the morrow,
+moving her lips the while, and looking round archly solemn when she
+has done; and that sight so catches at Mrs. Berry's heart that, not
+guessing Time to be the poor child's enemy, she endangers her candle
+by folding Lucy warmly in her arms, whimpering, "Bless you for a
+darling! you innocent lamb! You shall be happy! You shall!"
+
+Old Time gazes grimly ahead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+IN WHICH THE LAST ACT OF A COMEDY TAKES THE PLACE OF THE FIRST
+
+
+Although it blew hard when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, the passage of
+that river is commonly calm; calm as Acheron. So long as he gets his
+fare, the ferryman does not need to be told whom he carries: he
+pulls with a will, and heroes may be over in half-an-hour. Only when
+they stand on the opposite bank, do they see what a leap they have
+taken. The shores they have relinquished shrink to an infinite
+remoteness. There they have dreamed: here they must act. There lie
+youth and irresolution: here manhood and purpose. They are veritably
+in another land: a moral Acheron divides their life. Their memories
+scarce seem their own! The PHILOSOPHICAL GEOGRAPHY (about to be
+published) observes that each man has, one time or other, a little
+Rubicon--a clear or a foul water to cross. It is asked him: "Wilt
+thou wed this Fate, and give up all behind thee?" And "I will,"
+firmly pronounced, speeds him over. The above-named manuscript
+authority informs us, that by far the greater number of carcases
+rolled by this heroic flood to its sister stream below, are those of
+fellows who have repented their pledge, and have tried to swim back
+to the bank they have blotted out. For though every man of us may be
+a hero for one fatal minute, very few remain so after a day's march
+even: and who wonders that Madam Fate is indignant, and wears the
+features of the terrible Universal Fate to him? Fail before her,
+either in heart or in act, and lo, how the alluring loves in her
+visage wither and sicken to what it is modelled on! Be your Rubicon
+big or small, clear or foul, it is the same: you shall not return.
+On--or to Acheron!--I subscribe to that saying of THE PILGRIM'S
+SCRIP:
+
+"The danger of a little knowledge of things is disputable: _but
+beware the little knowledge of one's self!_"
+
+Richard Feverel was now crossing the River of his Ordeal. Already
+the mists were stealing over the land he had left: his life was cut
+in two, and he breathed but the air that met his nostrils. His
+father, his father's love, his boyhood and ambition, were shadowy.
+His poetic dreams had taken a living attainable shape. He had a
+distincter impression of the Autumnal Berry and her household than
+of anything at Raynham. And yet the young man loved his father,
+loved his home: and I daresay Caesar loved Rome: but whether he did
+or no, Caesar when he killed the Republic was quite bald, and the
+hero we are dealing with is scarce beginning to feel his despotic
+moustache. Did he know what he was made of? Doubtless, nothing at
+all. But honest passion has an instinct that can be safer than
+conscious wisdom. He was an arrow drawn to the head, flying to the
+bow. His audacious mendacities and subterfuges did not strike him as
+in any way criminal; for he was perfectly sure that the winning and
+securing of Lucy would in the end be boisterously approved of, and
+in that case, were not the means justified? Not that he took trouble
+to argue thus, as older heroes and self-convicting villains are in
+the habit of doing, to deduce a clear conscience. Conscience and
+Lucy went together.
+
+It was a soft fair day. The Rubicon sparkled in the morning sun. One
+of those days when London embraces the prospect of summer, and
+troops forth all its babies. The pavement, the squares, the parks,
+were early alive with the cries of young Britain. Violet and
+primrose girls, and organ boys with military monkeys, and systematic
+bands very determined in tone if not in tune, filled the atmosphere,
+and crowned the blazing procession of omnibuses, freighted with
+business men, Cityward, where a column of reddish brown
+smoke,--blown aloft by the South-west, marked the scene of conflict
+to which these persistent warriors repaired. Richard had seen much
+of early London that morning. His plans were laid. He had taken care
+to ensure his personal liberty against accidents, by leaving his
+hotel and his injured uncle Hippias at sunrise. To-day or to-morrow
+his father was to arrive. Farmer Blaize, Tom Bakewell reported to
+him, was raging in town. Another day and she might be torn from him:
+but to-day this miracle of creation would be his, and then from
+those glittering banks yonder, let them summon him to surrender her
+who dared! The position of things looked so propitious that he
+naturally thought the powers waiting on love conspired in his
+behalf. And she, too--since she must cross this river, she had sworn
+to him to be brave, and do him honour, and wear the true gladness of
+her heart in her face. Without a suspicion of folly in his acts, or
+fear of results, Richard strolled into Kensington Gardens,
+breakfasting on the foreshadow of his great joy, now with a vision
+of his bride, now of the new life opening to him. Mountain masses of
+clouds, rounded in sunlight, swung up the blue. The flowering
+chestnut pavilions overhead rustled and hummed. A sound in his ears
+as of a banner unfolding in the joyful distance lulled him.
+
+He was to meet his bride at the church at a quarter past eleven. His
+watch said a quarter to ten. He strolled on beneath the long-stemmed
+trees toward the well dedicated to a saint obscure. Some people were
+drinking at the well. A florid lady stood by a younger one, who had
+a little silver mug half-way to her mouth, and evinced undisguised
+dislike to the liquor of the salutary saint.
+
+"Drink, child!" said the maturer lady. "That is only your second
+mug. I insist upon your drinking three full ones every morning we're
+in town. Your constitution positively requires iron!"
+
+"But, mama," the other expostulated, "it's so nasty. I shall be
+sick."
+
+"Drink!" was the harsh injunction. "Nothing to the German waters, my
+dear. Here, let me taste." She took the mug and gave it a flying
+kiss. "I declare I think it almost nice--not at all objectionable.
+Pray, taste it," she said to a gentleman standing below them to act
+as cup-bearer.
+
+An unmistakable cis-Rubicon voice replied: "Certainly, if it's good
+fellowship; though I confess I don't think mutual sickness a very
+engaging ceremony."
+
+Can one never escape from one's relatives? Richard ejaculated
+inwardly.
+
+Without a doubt those people were Mrs. Doria, Clare, and Adrian. He
+had them under his eyes.
+
+Clare, peeping up from her constitutional dose to make sure no man
+was near to see the possible consequence of it, was the first to
+perceive him. Her hand dropped.
+
+"Now, pray, drink, and do not fuss!" said Mrs. Doria.
+
+"Mama!" Clare gasped.
+
+Richard came forward and capitulated honourably, since retreat was
+out of the question. Mrs. Doria swam to meet him: "My own boy! My
+dear Richard!" profuse of exclamations. Clare shyly greeted him.
+Adrian kept in the background.
+
+"Why, we were coming for you to-day, Richard," said Mrs. Doria,
+smiling effusion; and rattled on, "We want another cavalier. This is
+delightful! My dear nephew! You have grown from a boy to a man. And
+there's down on his lip! And what brings you here at such an hour in
+the morning? Poetry, I suppose! Here, take my arm, child.--Clare!
+finish that mug and thank your cousin for sparing you the third. I
+always bring her, when we are by a chalybeate, to take the waters
+before breakfast. We have to get up at unearthly hours. Think, my
+dear boy! Mothers are sacrifices! And so you've been alone a
+fortnight with your agreeable uncle! A charming time of it you must
+have had! Poor Hippias! what may be his last nostrum?"
+
+"Nephew!" Adrian stretched his head round to the couple. "Doses of
+nephew taken morning and night fourteen days! And he guarantees that
+it shall destroy an iron constitution in a month."
+
+Richard mechanically shook Adrian's hand as he spoke.
+
+"Quite well, Ricky?"
+
+"Yes: well enough," Richard answered.
+
+"Well?" resumed his vigorous aunt, walking on with him, while Clare
+and Adrian followed. "I really never saw you looking so handsome.
+There's something about your face--look at me--you needn't blush.
+You've grown to an Apollo. That blue buttoned-up frock coat becomes
+you admirably--and those gloves, and that easy neck-tie. Your style
+is irreproachable, quite a style of your own! And nothing eccentric.
+You have the instinct of dress. Dress shows blood, my dear boy, as
+much as anything else. Boy!--you see, I can't forget old habits. You
+were a boy when I left, and now!--Do you see any change in him,
+Clare?" she turned half round to her daughter.
+
+"Richard is looking very well, mama," said Clare, glancing at him
+under her eyelids.
+
+"I wish I could say the same of you, my dear.--Take my arm, Richard.
+Are you afraid of your aunt? I want to get used to you. Won't it be
+pleasant, our being all in town together in the season? How fresh
+the Opera will be to you! Austin, I hear, takes stalls. You can come
+to the Forey's box when you like. We are staying with the Foreys
+close by here. I think it's a little too far out, you know; but they
+like the neighbourhood. This is what I have always said: Give him
+more liberty! Austin has seen it at last. How do you think Clare
+looking?"
+
+The question had to be repeated. Richard surveyed his cousin
+hastily, and praised her looks.
+
+"Pale!" Mrs. Doria sighed.
+
+"Rather pale, aunt."
+
+"Grown very much--don't you think, Richard?"
+
+"Very tall girl indeed, aunt."
+
+"If she had but a little more colour, my dear Richard! I'm sure I
+give her all the iron she can swallow, but that pallor still
+continues. I think she does not prosper away from her old
+companion. She was accustomed to look up to you, Richard"----
+
+"Did you get Ralph's letter, aunt?" Richard interrupted her.
+
+"Absurd!" Mrs. Doria pressed his arm. "The nonsense of a boy! Why
+did you undertake to forward such stuff?"
+
+"I'm certain he loves her," said Richard, in a serious way.
+
+The maternal eyes narrowed on him. "Life, my dear Richard, is a game
+of cross-purposes," she observed, dropping her fluency, and was
+rather angered to hear him laugh. He excused himself by saying that
+she spoke so like his father.
+
+"You breakfast with us," she freshened off again. "The Foreys wish
+to see you; the girls are dying to know you. Do you know, you have a
+reputation on account of that"--she crushed an intruding
+adjective--"System you were brought up on. You mustn't mind it. For
+my part, I think you look a credit to it. Don't be bashful with
+young women, mind! As much as you please with the old ones. You know
+how to behave among men. There you have your Drawing-room Guide! I'm
+sure I shall be proud of you. Am I not?"
+
+Mrs. Doria addressed his eyes coaxingly.
+
+A benevolent idea struck Richard, that he might employ the minutes
+to spare, in pleading the case of poor Ralph; and, as he was drawn
+along, he pulled out his watch to note the precise number of minutes
+he could dedicate to this charitable office.
+
+"Pardon me," said Mrs. Doria. "You want manners, my dear boy. I
+think it never happened to me before that a man consulted his watch
+in my presence."
+
+Richard mildly replied that he had an engagement at a particular
+hour, up to which he was her servant.
+
+"Fiddlededee!" the vivacious lady sang. "Now I've got you, I mean to
+keep you. Oh! I've heard all about you. This ridiculous indifference
+that your father makes so much of! Why, of course, you wanted to see
+the world! A strong, healthy young man shut up all his life in a
+lonely house--no friends, no society, no amusements but those of
+rustics! Of course you were indifferent! Your intelligence and
+superior mind alone saved you from becoming a dissipated country
+boor.--Where are the others?"
+
+Clare and Adrian came up at a quick pace.
+
+"My damozel dropped something," Adrian explained.
+
+Her mother asked what it was.
+
+"Nothing, mama," said Clare, demurely, and they proceeded as before.
+
+Overborne by his aunt's fluency of tongue, and occupied in acute
+calculation of the flying minutes, Richard let many pass before he
+edged in a word for Ralph. When he did, Mrs. Doria stopped him
+immediately.
+
+"I must tell you, child, that I refuse to listen to such rank
+idiotcy."
+
+"It's nothing of the kind, aunt."
+
+"The fancy of a boy."
+
+"He's not a boy. He's half-a-year older than I am!"
+
+"You silly child! The moment you fall in love, you all think
+yourselves men."
+
+"On my honour, aunt! I believe he loves her thoroughly."
+
+"Did he tell you so, child?"
+
+"Men don't speak openly of those things," said Richard.
+
+"Boys do," said Mrs. Doria.
+
+"But listen to me in earnest, aunt. I want you to be kind to Ralph.
+Don't drive him to--You may be sorry for it. Let him--do let him
+write to her, and see her. I believe women are as cruel as men in
+these things."
+
+"I never encourage absurdity, Richard."
+
+"What objection have you to Ralph, aunt?"
+
+"Oh, they're both good families. It's not that absurdity, Richard.
+It will be to his credit to remember that his first fancy wasn't a
+dairymaid." Mrs. Doria pitched her accent tellingly. It did not
+touch her nephew.
+
+"Don't you want Clare ever to marry?" He put the last point of
+reason to her.
+
+Mrs. Doria laughed. "I hope so, child. We must find some comfortable
+old gentleman for her."
+
+"What infamy!" mutters Richard.
+
+"And I engage Ralph shall be ready to dance at her wedding, or eat a
+hearty breakfast--We don't dance at weddings now, and very properly.
+It's a horrid sad business, not to be treated with levity.--Is that
+his regiment?" she said, as they passed out of the hussar-sentinelled
+gardens. "Tush, tush, child; Master Ralph will recover, as--hem!
+others have done. A little headache--you call it heartache--and up
+you rise again, looking better than ever. No doubt, to have a grain
+of sense forced into your brains, you poor dear children! must be
+painful. Girls suffer as much as boys, I assure you. More, for their
+heads are weaker, and their appetites less constant. Do I talk like
+your father now? Whatever makes the boy fidget at his watch so?"
+
+Richard stopped short. Time spoke urgently.
+
+"I must go," he said.
+
+His face did not seem good for trifling. Mrs. Doria would trifle in
+spite.
+
+"Listen, Clare! Richard is going. He says he has an engagement. What
+possible engagement can a young man have at eleven o'clock in the
+morning?--unless it's to be married!" Mrs. Doria laughed at the
+ingenuity of her suggestion.
+
+"Is the church handy, Ricky?" said Adrian. "You can still give us
+half-an-hour if it is. The celibate hours strike at Twelve." And he
+also laughed in his fashion.
+
+"Won't you stay with us, Richard?" Clare asked. She blushed timidly,
+and her voice shook.
+
+Something indefinite--a sharp-edged thrill in the tones made the
+burning bridegroom speak gently to her.
+
+"Indeed, I would, Clare; I should like to please you, but I have a
+most imperative appointment--that is, I promised--I must go. I shall
+see you again"----
+
+Mrs. Doria took forcible possession of him. "Now, do come, and don't
+waste words. I insist upon your having some breakfast first, and
+then, if you really must go, you shall. Look! there's the house. At
+least you will accompany your aunt to the door."
+
+Richard conceded this. She little imagined what she required of him.
+Two of his golden minutes melted into nothingness. They were growing
+to be jewels of price, one by one more and more precious as they
+ran, and now so costly-rare--rich as his blood! not to kindest
+relations, dearest friends, could he give another. The die is cast!
+Ferryman! push off.
+
+"Good-bye!" he cried, nodding bluffly at the three as one, and fled.
+
+They watched his abrupt muscular stride through the grounds of the
+house. He looked like resolution on the march. Mrs. Doria, as usual
+with her out of her brother's hearing, began rating the System.
+
+"See what becomes of that nonsensical education! The boy really does
+not know how to behave like a common mortal. He has some paltry
+appointment, or is mad after some ridiculous idea of his own, and
+everything must be sacrificed to it! That's what Austin calls
+concentration of the faculties. I think it's more likely to lead to
+downright insanity than to greatness of any kind. And so I shall
+tell Austin. It's time he should be spoken to seriously about him."
+
+"He's an engine, my dear aunt," said Adrian. "He isn't a boy, or a
+man, but an engine. And he appears to have been at high pressure
+since he came to town--out all day and half the night."
+
+"He's mad!" Mrs. Doria interjected.
+
+"Not at all. Extremely shrewd is Master Ricky, and carries as open
+an eye ahead of him as the ships before Troy. He's more than a match
+for any of us. He is for me, I confess."
+
+"Then," said Mrs. Doria, "he does astonish me!"
+
+Adrian begged her to retain her astonishment till the right season,
+which would not be long arriving.
+
+Their common wisdom counselled them not to tell the Foreys of their
+hopeful relative's ungracious behaviour. Clare had left them. When
+Mrs. Doria went to her room her daughter was there, gazing down at
+something in her hand, which she guiltily closed.
+
+In answer to an inquiry why she had not gone to take off her things,
+Clare said she was not hungry. Mrs. Doria lamented the obstinacy of
+a constitution that no quantity of iron could affect, and eclipsed
+the looking-glass, saying: "Take them off here, child, and learn to
+assist yourself."
+
+She disentangled her bonnet from the array of her spreading hair,
+talking of Richard, and his handsome appearance, and extraordinary
+conduct. Clare kept opening and shutting her hand, in an attitude
+half pensive, half-listless. She did not stir to undress. A joyous
+dimple hung in one pale cheek, and she drew long, even breaths.
+
+Mrs. Doria, assured by the glass that she was ready to show, came to
+her daughter.
+
+"Now, really," she said, "you are too helpless, my dear. You cannot
+do a thing without a dozen women at your elbow. What will become of
+you? You will have to marry a millionaire.--What's the matter with
+you, child?"
+
+Clare undid her tight-shut fingers, as if to some attraction of her
+eyes, and displayed a small gold hoop on the palm of a green glove.
+
+"A wedding-ring!" exclaimed Mrs. Doria, inspecting the curiosity
+most daintily.
+
+There on Clare's pale green glove lay a wedding-ring!
+
+Rapid questions as to where, when, how, it was found, beset Clare,
+who replied: "In the Gardens, mama. This morning. When I was walking
+behind Richard."
+
+"Are you sure he did not give it you, Clare?"
+
+"Oh no, mama! he did not give it me!"
+
+"Of course not! only he does such absurd things! I thought,
+perhaps--these boys are so exceedingly ridiculous!" Mrs. Doria had
+an idea that it might have been concerted between the two young
+gentlemen, Richard and Ralph, that the former should present this
+token of hymeneal devotion from the latter to the young lady of his
+love; but a moment's reflection, exonerated boys even from such
+preposterous behaviour.
+
+"Now, I wonder," she speculated on Clare's cold face, "I do wonder
+whether it's lucky to find a wedding-ring. What very quick eyes you
+have, my darling!" Mrs. Doria kissed her. She thought it must be
+lucky, and the circumstance made her feel tender to her child. Her
+child did not move to the kiss.
+
+"Let's see whether it fits," said Mrs. Doria, almost infantine with
+surprise and pleasure.
+
+Clare suffered her glove to be drawn off. The ring slid down her
+long thin finger, and settled comfortably.
+
+"It does!" Mrs. Doria whispered. To find a wedding-ring is open to
+any woman; but to find a wedding-ring that fits may well cause a
+superstitious emotion. Moreover, that it should be found while
+walking in the neighbourhood of the identical youth whom a mother
+has destined for her daughter, gives significance to the gentle
+perturbation of ideas consequent on such a hint from Fortune.
+
+"It really fits!" she pursued. "Now I never pay any attention to the
+nonsense of omens and that kind of thing" (had the ring been a
+horseshoe Mrs. Doria would have picked it up and dragged it
+obediently home), "but this, I must say, is odd--to find a ring that
+fits!--singular! It never happened to me. Sixpence is the most I
+ever discovered, and I have it now. Mind you keep it, Clare--this
+ring. And," she laughed, "offer it to Richard when he comes; say,
+you think he must have dropped it."
+
+The dimple in Clare's cheek quivered.
+
+Mother and daughter had never spoken explicitly of Richard. Mrs.
+Doria, by exquisite management, had contrived to be sure that on one
+side there would be no obstacle to her project of general happiness,
+without, as she thought, compromising her daughter's feelings
+unnecessarily. It could do no harm to an obedient young girl to hear
+that there was no youth in the world like a certain youth. He the
+prince of his generation, she might softly consent, when requested,
+to be his princess; and if never requested (for Mrs. Doria envisaged
+failure), she might easily transfer her softness to squires of lower
+degree. Clare had always been blindly obedient to her mother (Adrian
+called them Mrs. Doria Battledoria and the fair Shuttlecockiana),
+and her mother accepted in this blind obedience the text of her
+entire character. It is difficult for those who think very earnestly
+for their children to know when their children are thinking on their
+own account. The exercise of their volition we construe as revolt.
+Our love does not like to be invalided and deposed from its command,
+and here I think yonder old thrush on the lawn who has just kicked
+the last of her lank offspring out of the nest to go shift for
+itself, much the kinder of the two, though sentimental people do
+shrug their shoulders at these unsentimental acts of the creatures
+who never wander from nature. Now, excess of obedience is, to one
+who manages most exquisitely, as bad as insurrection. Happily Mrs.
+Doria saw nothing in her daughter's manner save a want of iron. Her
+pallor, her lassitude, the tremulous nerves in her face, exhibited
+an imperious requirement of the mineral.
+
+"The reason why men and women are mysterious to us, and prove
+disappointing," we learn from THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP, "is, that we will
+read them from our own book; just as we are perplexed by reading
+ourselves from theirs."
+
+Mrs. Doria read her daughter from her own book, and she was gay; she
+laughed with Adrian at the breakfast-table, and mock-seriously
+joined in his jocose assertion that Clare was positively and by all
+hymeneal auspices betrothed to the owner of that ring, be he who he
+may, and must, whenever he should choose to come and claim her, give
+her hand to him (for everybody agreed the owner must be masculine,
+as no _woman_ would drop a wedding-ring), and follow him whither he
+listed all the world over. Amiable giggling Forey girls called
+Clare, The Betrothed. Dark man, or fair? was mooted. Adrian threw
+off the first strophe of Clare's fortune in burlesque rhymes, with
+an insinuating gipsy twang. Her aunt Forey warned her to have her
+dresses in readiness. Her grandpapa Forey pretended to grumble at
+bridal presents being expected from grandpapas. This one smelt
+orange-flower, another spoke solemnly of an old shoe. The finding of
+a wedding-ring was celebrated through all the palpitating
+accessories and rosy ceremonies involved by that famous instrument.
+In the midst of the general hilarity, Clare showed her deplorable
+want of iron by bursting into tears.
+
+Did the poor mocked-at heart divine what might be then enacting?
+Perhaps, dimly, as we say: that is, without eyes.
+
+At an altar stand two fair young creatures, ready with their oaths.
+They are asked to fix all time to the moment, and they do so. If
+there is hesitation at the immense undertaking, it is but maidenly.
+She conceives as little mental doubt of the sanity of the act as he.
+Over them hangs a cool young curate in his raiment of office. Behind
+are two apparently lucid people, distinguished from each other by
+sex and age; the foremost a bunch of simmering black satin; under
+her shadow a cock-robin in the dress of a gentleman, big joy
+swelling out his chest, and pert satisfaction cocking his head.
+These be they who stand here in place of parents to the young
+couple. All is well. The service proceeds.
+
+Firmly the bridegroom tells forth his words. This hour of the
+complacent giant at least is his, and that he means to hold him
+bound through the eternities, men may hear. Clearly, and with brave
+modesty, speaks she: no less firmly, though her body trembles: her
+voice just vibrating while the tone travels on, like a smitten vase.
+
+Time hears sentence pronounced on him: the frail hands bind his huge
+limbs and lock the chains. He is used to it: he lets them do as they
+will.
+
+Then comes that period when they are to give their troth to each
+other. The Man with his right hand takes the Woman by her right
+hand: the Woman with her right hand takes the Man by his right
+hand.--Devils dare not laugh at whom Angels crowd to contemplate.
+
+Their hands are joined; their blood flows as one stream. Adam and
+fair Eve front the generations. Are they not lovely? Purer fountains
+of life were never in two bosoms.
+
+And then they loose their hands, and the cool curate doth bid the
+Man to put a ring on the Woman's fourth finger, counting thumb. And
+the Man thrusts his hand into one pocket, and into another, forward
+and back many times: into all his pockets. He remembers that he felt
+for it, and felt it in his waistcoat pocket, when in the Gardens.
+And his hand comes forth empty. And the Man is ghastly to look at!
+
+Yet, though Angels smile, shall not Devils laugh! The curate
+deliberates. The black satin bunch ceases to simmer. He in her
+shadow changes from a beaming cock-robin to an inquisitive sparrow.
+Eyes multiply questions: lips have no reply. Time ominously shakes
+his chain, and in the pause a sound of mockery stings their ears.
+
+Think ye a hero is one to be defeated in his first battle? Look at
+the clock! there are but seven minutes to the stroke of the celibate
+hours: the veteran is surely lifting his two hands to deliver fire,
+and his shot will sunder them in twain so nearly united. All the
+jewellers of London speeding down with sacks full of the nuptial
+circlet cannot save them!
+
+The battle must be won on the field, and what does the hero now? It
+is an inspiration! For who else would dream of such a reserve in
+the rear? None see what he does; only that the black-satin bunch is
+remonstratingly agitated, stormily shaken, and subdued: and as
+though the menacing cloud had opened, and dropped the dear token
+from the skies at his demand, he produces the symbol of their
+consent, and the service proceeds: "With this ring I thee wed."
+
+They are prayed over and blest. For good, or for ill, this deed is
+done. The names are registered; fees fly right and left: they thank,
+and salute, the curate, whose official coolness melts into a smile
+of monastic gallantry: the beadle on the steps waves off a gaping
+world as they issue forth: bridegroom and bridesman recklessly
+scatter gold on him: carriage doors are banged to: the coachmen
+drive off, and the scene closes, everybody happy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+CELEBRATES THE BREAKFAST
+
+
+And the next moment the bride is weeping as if she would dissolve to
+one of Dian's Virgin Fountains from the clasp of the Sun-God. She
+has nobly preserved the mask imposed by comedies, till the curtain
+has fallen, and now she weeps, streams with tears. Have patience, O
+impetuous young man! It is your profession to be a hero. This poor
+heart is new to it, and her duties involve such wild acts, such
+brigandage, such terrors and tasks, she is quite unnerved. She did
+you honour till now. Bear with her now. She does not cry the cry of
+ordinary maidens in like cases. While the struggle went on her
+tender face was brave; but alas! Omens are against her: she holds an
+ever-present dreadful one on that fatal fourth finger of hers, which
+has coiled itself round her dream of delight, and takes her in its
+clutch like a horrid serpent. And yet she must love it. She dares
+not part from it. She must love and hug it, and feed on its strange
+honey, and all the bliss it gives her casts all the deeper shadow on
+what is to come.
+
+Say: Is it not enough to cause feminine apprehension, for a woman to
+be married in another woman's ring?
+
+You are amazons, ladies, at Saragossa, and a thousand
+citadels--wherever there is strife, and Time is to be taken by the
+throat. Then shall few men match your sublime fury. But what if you
+see a vulture, visible only to yourselves, hovering over the house
+you are gaily led by the torch to inhabit? Will you not crouch and
+be cowards?
+
+As for the hero, in the hour of victory he pays no heed to omens. He
+does his best to win his darling to confidence by caresses. Is she
+not his? Is he not hers? And why, when the battle is won, does she
+weep? Does she regret what she has done?
+
+Oh, never! never! her soft blue eyes assure him, steadfast love seen
+swimming on clear depths of faith in them, through the shower.
+
+He is silenced by her exceeding beauty, and sits perplexed waiting
+for the shower to pass.
+
+Alone with Mrs. Berry, in her bedroom, Lucy gave tongue to her
+distress, and a second character in the comedy changed her face.
+
+"O Mrs. Berry! Mrs. Berry! what has happened! what has happened!"
+
+"My darlin' child!" The bridal Berry gazed at the finger of doleful
+joy. "I'd forgot all about it! And that's what've made me feel so
+queer ever since, then! I've been seemin' as if I wasn't myself
+somehow, without my ring. Dear! dear! what a wilful young gentleman!
+We ain't a match for men in that state--Lord help us!"
+
+Mrs. Berry sat on the edge of a chair: Lucy on the edge of the bed.
+
+"What do you think of it, Mrs. Berry? Is it not terrible?"
+
+"I can't say I should'a liked it myself, my dear," Mrs. Berry
+candidly responded.
+
+"Oh! why, why, why did it happen!" the young bride bent to a flood
+of fresh tears, murmuring that she felt already old--forsaken.
+
+"Haven't you got a comfort in your religion for all accidents?" Mrs.
+Berry inquired.
+
+"None for this. I know it's wrong to cry when I am so happy. I hope
+he will forgive me."
+
+Mrs. Berry vowed her bride was the sweetest, softest, beautifulest
+thing in life.
+
+"I'll cry no more," said Lucy. "Leave me, Mrs. Berry, and come back
+when I ring."
+
+She drew forth a little silver cross, and fell upon her knees to the
+bed. Mrs. Berry left the room tiptoe.
+
+When she was called to return, Lucy was calm and tearless, and
+smiled kindly to her.
+
+"It's over now," she said.
+
+Mrs. Berry sedately looked for her ring to follow.
+
+"He does not wish me to go in to the breakfast you have prepared,
+Mrs. Berry. I begged to be excused. I cannot eat."
+
+Mrs. Berry very much deplored it, as she had laid out a superior
+nuptial breakfast, but with her mind on her ring she nodded
+assentingly.
+
+"We shall not have much packing to do, Mrs. Berry."
+
+"No, my dear. It's pretty well all done."
+
+"We are going to the Isle of Wight, Mrs. Berry."
+
+"And a very suitable spot ye've chose, my dear!"
+
+"He loves the sea. He wishes to be near it."
+
+"Don't ye cross to-night, if it's anyways rough, my dear. It isn't
+advisable." Mrs. Berry sank her voice to say, "Don't ye be soft and
+give way to him there, or you'll both be repenting it."
+
+Lucy had only been staving off the unpleasantness she had to speak.
+She saw Mrs. Berry's eyes pursuing her ring, and screwed up her
+courage at last.
+
+"Mrs. Berry."
+
+"Yes, my dear."
+
+"Mrs. Berry, you shall have another ring."
+
+"Another, my dear?" Berry did not comprehend. "One's quite enough
+for the objeck," she remarked.
+
+"I mean," Lucy touched her fourth finger, "I cannot part with this."
+She looked straight at Mrs. Berry.
+
+That bewildered creature gazed at her, and at the ring, till she had
+thoroughly exhausted the meaning of the words, and then exclaimed,
+horror-struck: "Deary me, now! you don't say that? You're to be
+married again in your own religion."
+
+The young wife repeated: "I can never part with it."
+
+"But, my dear!" the wretched Berry wrung her hands, divided between
+compassion and a sense of injury. "My dear!" she kept expostulating
+like a mute.
+
+"I know all that you would say, Mrs. Berry. I am very grieved to
+pain you. It is mine now, and must be mine. I cannot give it back."
+
+There she sat, suddenly developed to the most inflexible little
+heroine in the three Kingdoms.
+
+From her first perception of the meaning of the young bride's words,
+Mrs. Berry, a shrewd physiognomist, knew that her case was hopeless,
+unless she treated her as she herself had been treated, and seized
+the ring by force of arms; and that she had not heart for.
+
+"What!" she gasped faintly, "one's own lawful wedding-ring you
+wouldn't give back to a body?"
+
+"Because it is mine, Mrs. Berry. It was yours, but it is mine now.
+You shall have whatever you ask for but that. Pray, forgive me! It
+must be so."
+
+Mrs. Berry rocked on her chair, and sounded her hands together. It
+amazed her that this soft little creature could be thus firm. She
+tried argument.
+
+"Don't ye know, my dear, it's the fatalest thing you're inflictin'
+upon me, reelly! Don't ye know that bein' bereft of one's own lawful
+wedding-ring's the fatalest thing in life, and there's no prosperity
+after it! For what stands in place o' that, when that's gone, my
+dear? And what _could_ ye give me to compensate a body for the loss
+o' that! Don't ye know--Oh, deary me!" The little bride's face was
+so set that poor Berry wailed off in despair.
+
+"I know it," said Lucy. "I know it all. I know what I do to you.
+Dear, dear Mrs. Berry! forgive me! If I parted with my ring I know
+it would be fatal."
+
+So this fair young freebooter took possession of her argument as
+well as her ring.
+
+Berry racked her distracted wits for a further appeal.
+
+"But, my child," she counterargued, "you don't understand. It ain't
+as you think. It ain't a hurt to you now. Not a bit, it ain't. It
+makes no difference now! Any ring does while the wearer's a maid.
+And your Mr. Richard'll find the very ring he intended for ye. And,
+of course, that's the one you'll wear as his wife. It's all the same
+now, my dear. It's no shame to a maid. Now do--now do--there's a
+darlin'!"
+
+Wheedling availed as little as argument.
+
+"Mrs. Berry," said Lucy, "you know what my--he spoke: 'With this
+ring I thee wed.' It was with _this_ ring. Then how could it be with
+another?"
+
+Berry was constrained despondently to acknowledge that was logic.
+
+She hit upon an artful conjecture:
+
+"Won't it be unlucky your wearin' of the ring which served me so?
+Think o' that!"
+
+"It may! it may! it may!" cried Lucy.
+
+"And arn't you rushin' into it, my dear?"
+
+"Mrs. Berry," Lucy said again, "it was this ring. It cannot--it
+never can be another. It was this. What it brings me I must bear. I
+shall wear it till I die!"
+
+"Then what am _I_ to do?" the ill-used woman groaned. "What shall I
+tell my husband when he come back to me, and see I've got a new ring
+waitin' for him? Won't that be a welcome?"
+
+Quoth Lucy: "How can he know it is not the same, in a plain gold
+ring?"
+
+"You never see so keen a eyed man in joolry as my Berry!" returned
+his solitary spouse. "Not know, my dear? Why, any one would know
+that 've got eyes in his head. There's as much difference in
+wedding-rings as there's in wedding people! Now, do pray be
+reasonable, my own sweet!"
+
+"Pray, do not ask me," pleads Lucy.
+
+"Pray, do think better of it," urges Berry.
+
+"Pray, pray, Mrs. Berry!" pleads Lucy.
+
+"--And not leave your old Berry all forlorn just when you're so
+happy!"
+
+"Indeed I would not, you dear, kind old creature!" Lucy faltered.
+
+Mrs. Berry thought she had her.
+
+"Just when you're going to be the happiest wife on earth--all you
+want yours!" she pursued the tender strain. "A handsome young
+gentleman! Love and Fortune smilin' on ye!"----
+
+Lucy rose up.
+
+"Mrs. Berry," she said, "I think we must not lose time in getting
+ready, or he will be impatient."
+
+Poor Berry surveyed her in abject wonder from the edge of her
+chair. Dignity and resolve were in the ductile form she had hitherto
+folded under her wing. In an hour the heroine had risen to the
+measure of the hero. Without being exactly aware what creature she
+was dealing with, Berry acknowledged to herself it was not one of
+the common run, and sighed, and submitted.
+
+"It's like a divorce, that it is!" she sobbed.
+
+After putting the corners of her apron to her eyes, Berry bustled
+humbly about the packing. Then Lucy, whose heart was full to her,
+came and kissed her, and Berry bumped down and regularly cried. This
+over, she had recourse to fatalism.
+
+"I suppose it was to be, my dear! It's my punishment for meddlin'
+wi' such matters. No, I'm not sorry. Bless ye both. Who'd 'a thought
+you was so wilful?--you that any one might have taken for one of the
+silly-softs! You're a pair, my dear! indeed you are! You was made to
+meet! But we mustn't show him we've been crying.--Men don't like it
+when they're happy. Let's wash our faces and try to bear our lot."
+
+So saying the black-satin bunch careened to a renewed deluge. She
+deserved some sympathy, for if it is sad to be married in another
+person's ring, how much sadder to have one's own old accustomed
+lawful ring violently torn off one's finger and eternally severed
+from one! But where you have heroes and heroines, these terrible
+complications ensue.
+
+They had now both fought their battle of the ring, and with equal
+honour and success.
+
+In the chamber of banquet Richard was giving Ripton his last
+directions. Though it was a private wedding, Mrs. Berry had prepared
+a sumptuous breakfast. Chickens offered their breasts: pies hinted
+savoury secrets: things mystic, in a mash, with Gallic appellatives,
+jellies, creams, fruits, strewed the table: as a tower in the midst,
+the cake colossal: the priestly vesture of its nuptial white
+relieved by hymeneal splendours.
+
+Many hours, much labour and anxiety of mind, Mrs. Berry had expended
+upon this breakfast, and why? There is one who comes to all feasts
+that have their basis in Folly, whom criminals of trained instinct
+are careful to provide against: who will speak, and whose hateful
+voice must somehow be silenced while the feast is going on. This
+personage is THE PHILOSOPHER. Mrs. Berry knew him. She knew that he
+would come. She provided against him in the manner she thought most
+efficacious: that is, by cheating her eyes and intoxicating her
+conscience with the due and proper glories incident to weddings
+where fathers dilate, mothers collapse, and marriage settlements are
+flourished on high by the family lawyer: and had there been no show
+of the kind to greet her on her return from the church, she would,
+and she foresaw she would, have stared at squalor and emptiness, and
+repented her work. The Philosopher would have laid hold of her by
+the ear, and called her bad names. Entrenched behind a breakfast-table
+so legitimately adorned, Mrs. Berry defied him. In the presence of
+that cake he dared not speak above a whisper. And there were wines
+to drown him in, should he still think of protesting; fiery wines, and
+cool: claret sent purposely by the bridegroom for the delectation of
+his friend.
+
+For one good hour, therefore, the labour of many hours kept him
+dumb. Ripton was fortifying himself so as to forget him altogether,
+and the word as well, till the next morning. Ripton was excited,
+overdone with delight. He had already finished one bottle, and
+listened, pleasantly flushed, to his emphatic and more abstemious
+chief. He had nothing to do but to listen, and to drink. The hero
+would not allow him to shout Victory! or hear a word of toasts; and
+as, from the quantity of oil poured on it, his eloquence was
+becoming a natural force in his bosom, the poor fellow was afflicted
+with a sort of elephantiasis of suppressed emotion. At times he
+half-rose from his chair, and fell vacuously into it again; or he
+chuckled in the face of weighty, severely-worded instructions;
+tapped his chest, stretched his arms, yawned, and in short behaved
+so singularly that Richard observed it, and said: "On my soul, I
+don't think you know a word I'm saying."
+
+"Every word, Ricky!" Ripton spirted through the opening. "I'm going
+down to your governor, and tell him: Sir Austin! Here's your only
+chance of being a happy father--no, no!--Oh! don't you fear me,
+Ricky! I shall talk the old gentleman over."
+
+His chief said:
+
+"Look here. You had better not go down to-night. Go down the first
+thing to-morrow, by the six o'clock train. Give him my letter.
+Listen to me--give him my letter, and don't speak a word till he
+speaks. His eyebrows will go up and down, he won't say much. I know
+him. If he asks you about her, don't be a fool, but say what you
+think of her sensibly"----
+
+No cork could hold in Ripton when she was alluded to He shouted:
+"She's an angel!"
+
+Richard checked him: "Speak sensibly, I say--quietly. You can say
+how gentle and good she is--my fleur-de-luce! And say, this was not
+her doing. If any one's to blame, it's I. I made her marry me. Then
+go to Lady Blandish, if you don't find her at the house. You may say
+whatever you please to her. Give her my letter, and tell her I want
+to hear from her immediately. She has seen Lucy, and I know what she
+thinks of her. You will then go to Farmer Blaize. I told you Lucy
+happens to be his niece--she has not lived long there. She lived
+with her aunt Desborough in France while she was a child, and can
+hardly be called a relative to the farmer--there's not a point of
+likeness between them. Poor darling! she never knew her mother. Go
+to Mr. Blaize, and tell him. You will treat him just as you would
+treat any other gentleman. If you are civil, he is sure to be. And
+if he abuses me, for my sake and hers you will still treat him with
+respect. You hear? And then write me a full account of all that has
+been said and done. You will have my address the day after
+to-morrow. By the way, Tom will be here this afternoon. Write out
+for him where to call on you the day after to-morrow, in case you
+have heard anything in the morning you think I ought to know at
+once, as Tom will join me that night. Don't mention to anybody about
+my losing the ring, Ripton. I wouldn't have Adrian get hold of that
+for a thousand pounds. How on earth I came to lose it! How well she
+bore it, Rip! How beautifully she behaved!"
+
+Ripton again shouted: "An angel!" Throwing up the heels of his
+second bottle, he said:
+
+"You may trust your friend, Richard. Aha! when you pulled at old
+Mrs. Berry I didn't know what was up. I do wish you'd let me drink
+her health?"
+
+"Here's to Penelope!" said Richard, just wetting his mouth. The
+carriage was at the door: a couple of dire organs, each grinding the
+same tune, and a vulture-scented itinerant band (from which not the
+secretest veiled wedding can escape) worked harmoniously without in
+the production of discord, and the noise acting on his nervous state
+made him begin to fume and send in messages for his bride by the
+maid.
+
+By and by the lovely young bride presented herself dressed for her
+journey, and smiling from stained eyes.
+
+Mrs. Berry was requested to drink some wine, which Ripton poured out
+for her, enabling Mrs. Berry thereby to measure his condition.
+
+The bride now kissed Mrs. Berry, and Mrs. Berry kissed the
+bridegroom, on the plea of her softness. Lucy gave Ripton her hand,
+with a musical "Good-bye, Mr. Thompson," and her extreme
+graciousness made him just sensible enough to sit down before he
+murmured his fervent hopes for her happiness.
+
+"I shall take good care of him," said Mrs. Berry, focussing her eyes
+to the comprehension of the company.
+
+"Farewell, Penelope!" cried Richard. "I shall tell the police
+everywhere to look out for your lord."
+
+"Oh my dears! good-bye, and Heaven bless ye both!"
+
+Berry quavered, touched with compunction at the thoughts of
+approaching loneliness. Ripton, his mouth drawn like a bow to his
+ears, brought up the rear to the carriage, receiving a fair slap on
+the cheek from an old shoe precipitated by Mrs. Berry's enthusiastic
+female domestic.
+
+White handkerchiefs were waved, the adieux had fallen to signs: they
+were off. Then did a thought of such urgency illumine Mrs. Berry,
+that she telegraphed, hand in air, awakening Ripton's lungs, for the
+coachman to stop, and ran back to the house. Richard chafed to be
+gone, but at his bride's intercession he consented to wait.
+Presently they beheld the old black-satin bunch stream through the
+street-door, down the bit of garden, and up the astonished street,
+halting, panting, capless at the carriage door, a book in her
+hand,--a much-used, dog-leaved, steamy, greasy book, which, at the
+same time calling out in breathless jerks, "There! never ye mind
+looks! I ain't got a new one. Read it, and don't ye forget it!" she
+discharged into Lucy's lap, and retreated to the railings, a signal
+for the coachman to drive away for good.
+
+How Richard laughed at the Berry's bridal gift! Lucy, too, lost the
+omen at her heart as she glanced at the title of the volume. It was
+Dr. Kitchener on Domestic Cookery!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+THE PHILOSOPHER APPEARS IN PERSON
+
+
+General withdrawing of heads from street-windows, emigration of
+organs and bands, and a relaxed atmosphere in the circle of Mrs.
+Berry's abode, proved that Dan Cupid had veritably flown to suck the
+life of fresh regions. With a pensive mind she grasped Ripton's arm
+to regulate his steps, and returned to the room where her creditor
+awaited her. In the interval he had stormed her undefended fortress,
+the cake, from which altitude he shook a dolorous head at the guilty
+woman. She smoothed her excited apron, sighing. Let no one imagine
+that she regretted her complicity. She was ready to cry torrents,
+but there must be absolute castigation before this criminal shall
+conceive the sense of regret; and probably then she will cling to
+her wickedness the more--such is the born Pagan's tenacity! Mrs.
+Berry sighed, and gave him back his shake of the head. O you wanton,
+improvident creature! said he. O you very wise old gentleman! said
+she. He asked her the thing she had been doing. She enlightened him
+with the fatalist's reply. He sounded a bogey's alarm of contingent
+grave results. She retreated to the entrenched camp of the fact she
+had helped to make.
+
+"It's done!" she exclaimed. How could she regret what she felt
+comfort to know was done? Convinced that events alone could stamp a
+mark on such stubborn flesh, he determined to wait for them, and
+crouched silent on the cake, with one finger downward at Ripton's
+incision there, showing a crumbling chasm and gloomy rich recess.
+
+The eloquent indication was understood. "Dear! dear!" cried Mrs.
+Berry, "what a heap o' cake, and no one to send it to!"
+
+Ripton had resumed his seat by the table and his embrace of the
+claret. Clear ideas of satisfaction had left him and resolved to a
+boiling geysir of indistinguishable transports. He bubbled, and
+waggled, and nodded amicably to nothing, and successfully, though
+not without effort, preserved his uppermost member from the
+seductions of the nymph, Gravitation, who was on the look-out for
+his whole length shortly.
+
+"Ha! ha!" he shouted, about a minute after Mrs. Berry had spoken,
+and almost abandoned himself to the nymph on the spot. Mrs. Berry's
+words had just reached his wits.
+
+"Why do you laugh, young man?" she inquired, familiar and motherly
+on account of his condition.
+
+Ripton laughed louder, and caught his chest on the edge of the table
+and his nose on a chicken. "That's goo'!" he said, recovering, and
+rocking under Mrs. Berry's eyes. "No friend!"
+
+"I did not say, no friend," she remarked. "I said, no one; meanin',
+I know not where for to send it to."
+
+Ripton's response to this was: "You put a Griffin on that cake.
+Wheatsheaves each side."
+
+"His crest?" Mrs. Berry said sweetly.
+
+"Oldest baronetcy 'n England!" waved Ripton.
+
+"Yes?" Mrs. Berry encouraged him on.
+
+"You think he's Richards. We're oblige' be very close. And she's the
+most lovely!--If I hear man say thing 'gainst her."
+
+"You needn't for to cry over her, young man," said Mrs. Berry. "I
+wanted for to drink their right healths by their right names, and
+then go about my day's work, and I do hope you won't keep me."
+
+Ripton stood bolt upright at her words.
+
+"You do?" he said, and filling a bumper he with cheerfully vinous
+articulation and glibness of tongue proposed the health of Richard
+and Lucy Feverel, of Raynham Abbey! and that mankind should not
+require an expeditious example of the way to accept the inspiring
+toast, he drained his bumper at a gulp. It finished him. The
+farthing rushlight of his reason leapt and expired. He tumbled to
+the sofa and there stretched.
+
+Some minutes subsequent to Ripton's signalization of his devotion to
+the bridal pair, Mrs. Berry's maid entered the room to say that a
+gentleman was inquiring below after the young gentleman who had
+departed, and found her mistress with a tottering wineglass in her
+hand, exhibiting every symptom of unconsoled hysterics. Her mouth
+gaped, as if the fell creditor had her by the swallow. She
+ejaculated with horrible exultation that she had been and done it,
+as her disastrous aspect seemed to testify, and her evident, but
+inexplicable, access of misery induced the sympathetic maid to
+tender those caressing words that were all Mrs. Berry wanted to go
+off into the self-caressing fit without delay; and she had already
+given the preluding demoniac ironic outburst, when the maid called
+heaven to witness that the gentleman would hear her; upon which Mrs.
+Berry violently controlled her bosom, and ordered that he should be
+shown upstairs instantly to see her the wretch she was. She repeated
+the injunction.
+
+The maid did as she was told, and Mrs. Berry, wishing first to see
+herself as she was, mutely accosted the looking-glass, and tried to
+look a very little better. She dropped a shawl on Ripton and was
+settled, smoothing her agitation when her visitor was announced.
+
+The gentleman was Adrian Harley. An interview with Tom Bakewell had
+put him on the track, and now a momentary survey of the table, and
+its white-vestured cake, made him whistle.
+
+Mrs. Berry plaintively begged him to do her the favour to be seated.
+
+"A fine morning, ma'am," said Adrian.
+
+"It have been!" Mrs. Berry answered, glancing over her shoulder at
+the window, and gulping as if to get her heart down from her mouth.
+
+"A very fine Spring," pursued Adrian, calmly anatomizing her
+countenance.
+
+Mrs. Berry smothered an adjective to "weather" on a deep sigh. Her
+wretchedness was palpable. In proportion to it, Adrian waxed
+cheerful and brisk. He divined enough of the business to see that
+there was some strange intelligence to be fished out of the culprit
+who sat compressing hysterics before him; and as he was never more
+in his element than when he had a sinner, and a repentant prostrate
+abject sinner in hand, his affable countenance might well deceive
+poor Berry.
+
+"I presume these are Mr. Thompson's lodgings?" he remarked, with a
+look at the table.
+
+Mrs. Berry's head and the whites of her eyes informed him that they
+were not Mr. Thompson's lodgings.
+
+"No?" said Adrian, and threw a carelessly inquisitive eye about him.
+"Mr. Feverel is out, I suppose?"
+
+A convulsive start at the name, and two corroborating hands dropped
+on her knees, formed Mrs. Berry's reply.
+
+"Mr. Feverel's man," continued Adrian, "told me I should be certain
+to find him here. I thought he would be with his friend, Mr.
+Thompson. I'm too late, I perceive. Their entertainment is over. I
+fancy you have been having a party of them here, ma'am?--a
+bachelors' breakfast!"
+
+In the presence of that cake this observation seemed to mask an
+irony so shrewd that Mrs. Berry could barely contain herself. She
+felt she must speak. Making her face as deplorably propitiating as
+she could, she began:
+
+"Sir, may I beg for to know your name?"
+
+Mr. Harley accorded her request.
+
+Groaning in the clutch of a pitiless truth, she continued:
+
+"And you are Mr. Harley, that was--oh! and you've come for Mr.?"----
+
+Mr. Richard Feverel was the gentleman Mr. Harley had come for.
+
+"Oh! and it's no mistake, and he's of Raynham Abbey?" Mrs. Berry
+inquired.
+
+Adrian, very much amused, assured her that he was born and bred
+there.
+
+"His father's Sir Austin?" wailed the black-satin bunch from behind
+her handkerchief.
+
+Adrian verified Richard's descent.
+
+"Oh, then, what have I been and done!" she cried, and stared blankly
+at her visitor. "I been and married my baby! I been and married the
+bread out of my own mouth. O Mr. Harley! Mr. Harley! I knew you when
+you was a boy that big, and wore jackets; and all of you. And it's
+my softness that's my ruin, for I never can resist a man's asking.
+Look at that cake, Mr. Harley!"
+
+Adrian followed her directions quite coolly. "Wedding-cake, ma'am!"
+he said.
+
+"Bride-cake it is, Mr. Harley!"
+
+"Did you make it yourself, ma'am?"
+
+The quiet ease of the question overwhelmed Mrs. Berry, and upset
+that train of symbolic representations by which she was seeking to
+make him guess the catastrophe and spare her the furnace of
+confession.
+
+"I did not make it myself, Mr. Harley," she replied. "It's a bought
+cake, and I'm a lost woman. Little I dreamed when I had him in my
+arms a baby that I should some day be marrying him out of my own
+house! I little dreamed that! Oh, why did he come to me! Don't you
+remember his old nurse, when he was a baby in arms, that went away
+so sudden, and no fault of hers, Mr. Harley! The very mornin' after
+the night you got into Mr. Benson's cellar, and got so tipsy on his
+Madeary I remember it as clear as yesterday!--and Mr. Benson was
+that angry he threatened to use the whip to you, and I helped put
+you to bed. I'm that very woman."
+
+Adrian smiled placidly at these reminiscences of his guileless
+youthful life.
+
+"Well, ma'am! well?" he said. He would bring her to the furnace.
+
+"Won't you see it all, kind sir?" Mrs. Berry appealed to him in
+pathetic dumb show.
+
+Doubtless by this time Adrian did see it all, and was mentally
+cursing at Folly, and reckoning the immediate consequences, but he
+looked uninstructed, his peculiar dimple-smile was undisturbed, his
+comfortable full-bodied posture was the same. "Well, ma'am?" he
+spurred her on.
+
+Mrs. Berry burst forth: "It were done this mornin', Mr. Harley, in
+the church, at half-past eleven of the clock, or twenty to, by
+licence."
+
+Adrian was now obliged to comprehend a case of matrimony. "Oh!" he
+said, like one who is as hard as facts, and as little to be moved:
+"Somebody was married this morning; was it Mr. Thompson, or Mr.
+Feverel?"
+
+Mrs. Berry shuffled up to Ripton, and removed the shawl from him,
+saying: "Do he look like a new married bridegroom, Mr. Harley?"
+
+Adrian inspected the oblivious Ripton with philosophic gravity.
+
+"This young gentleman was at church this morning?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, quite reasonable and proper then," Mrs. Berry begged him to
+understand.
+
+"Of course, ma'am." Adrian lifted and let fall the stupid inanimate
+limbs of the gone wretch, puckering his mouth queerly. "You were all
+reasonable and proper, ma'am. The principal male performer, then, is
+my cousin, Mr. Feverel? He was married by you, this morning, by
+licence at your parish church, and came here, and ate a hearty
+breakfast, and left intoxicated."
+
+Mrs. Berry flew out. "He never drink a drop, sir. A more moderate
+young gentleman you never see. Oh! don't ye think that now, Mr.
+Harley. He was as upright and master of his mind as you be."
+
+"Ay!" the wise youth nodded thanks to her for the comparison, "I
+mean the other form of intoxication."
+
+Mrs. Berry sighed. She could say nothing on that score.
+
+Adrian desired her to sit down, and compose herself, and tell him
+circumstantially what had been done.
+
+She obeyed, in utter perplexity at his perfectly composed demeanour.
+
+Mrs. Berry, as her recital declared, was no other than that
+identical woman who once in old days had dared to behold the baronet
+behind his mask, and had ever since lived in exile from the Raynham
+world on a little pension regularly paid to her as an indemnity. She
+was that woman, and the thought of it made her almost accuse
+Providence for the betraying excess of softness it had endowed her
+with. How was she to recognize her baby grown a man? He came in a
+feigned name; not a word of the family was mentioned. He came like
+an ordinary mortal, though she felt something more than ordinary to
+him--she knew she did. He came bringing a beautiful young lady, and
+on what grounds could she turn her back on them? Why, seeing that
+all was chaste and legal, why _should_ she interfere to make them
+unhappy--so few the chances of happiness in this world! Mrs. Berry
+related the seizure of her ring.
+
+"One wrench," said the sobbing culprit, "one, and my ring was off!"
+
+She had no suspicions, and the task of writing her name in the
+vestry-book had been too enacting for a thought upon the other
+signatures.
+
+"I daresay you were exceedingly sorry for what you had done," said
+Adrian.
+
+"Indeed, sir," moaned Berry, "I were, and am."
+
+"And would do your best to rectify the mischief--eh, ma'am?"
+
+"Indeed, and indeed, sir, I would," she protested solemnly.
+
+"--As, of course, you should--knowing the family. Where may these
+lunatics have gone to spend the Moon?"
+
+Mrs. Berry swimmingly replied: "To the Isle----I don't quite know,
+sir!" she snapped the indication short, and jumped out of the pit
+she had fallen into. Repentant as she might be, those dears should
+not be pursued and cruelly balked of their young bliss! "To-morrow,
+if you please, Mr. Harley: not to-day!"
+
+"A pleasant spot," Adrian observed, smiling at his easy prey.
+
+By a measurement of dates he discovered that the bridegroom had
+brought his bride to the house on the day he had quitted Raynham,
+and this was enough to satisfy Adrian's mind that there had been
+concoction and chicanery. Chance, probably, had brought him to the
+old woman: chance certainly had not brought him to the young one.
+
+"Very well, ma'am," he said, in answer to her petitions for his
+favourable offices with Sir Austin in behalf of her little pension
+and the bridal pair, "I will tell him you were only a blind agent in
+the affair, being naturally soft, and that you trust he will bless
+the consummation. He will be in town to-morrow morning; but one of
+you two must see him to-night. An emetic kindly administered will
+set our friend here on his legs. A bath and a clean shirt, and he
+might go. I don't see why your name should appear at all. Brush him
+up, and send him to Bellingham by the seven o'clock train. He will
+find his way to Raynham; he knows the neighbourhood best in the
+dark. Let him go and state the case. Remember, one of you must go."
+
+With this fair prospect of leaving a choice of a perdition between
+the couple of unfortunates, for them to fight and lose all their
+virtue over, Adrian said, "Good morning."
+
+Mrs. Berry touchingly arrested him. "You won't refuse a piece of his
+cake, Mr. Harley?"
+
+"Oh, dear, no, ma'am," Adrian turned to the cake with alacrity. "I
+shall claim a very large piece. Richard has a great many friends who
+will rejoice to eat his wedding-cake. Cut me a fair quarter, Mrs.
+Berry. Put it in paper, if you please. I shall be delighted to carry
+it to them, and apportion it equitably according to their several
+degrees of relationship."
+
+Mrs. Berry cut the cake. Somehow, as she sliced through it, the
+sweetness and hapless innocence of the bride was presented to her,
+and she launched into eulogies of Lucy, and clearly showed how
+little she regretted her conduct. She vowed that they seemed made
+for each other; that both were beautiful; both had spirit; both were
+innocent; and to part them, or make them unhappy, would be, Mrs.
+Berry wrought herself to cry aloud, oh, such a pity!
+
+Adrian listened to it as the expression of a matter-of-fact opinion.
+He took the huge quarter of cake, nodded multitudinous promises, and
+left Mrs. Berry to bless his good heart.
+
+"So dies the System!" was Adrian's comment in the street. "And now
+let prophets roar! He dies respectably in a marriage-bed, which is
+more than I should have foretold of the monster. Meantime," he gave
+the cake a dramatic tap, "I'll go sow nightmares."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+PROCESSION OF THE CAKE
+
+
+Adrian really bore the news he had heard with creditable
+disinterestedness, and admirable repression of anything beneath the
+dignity of a philosopher. When one has attained that felicitous
+point of wisdom from which one sees all mankind to be fools, the
+diminutive objects may make what new moves they please, one does not
+marvel at them: their sedateness is as comical as their frolic, and
+their frenzies more comical still. On this intellectual eminence the
+wise youth had built his castle, and he had lived in it from an
+early period. Astonishment never shook the foundations, nor did envy
+of greater heights tempt him to relinquish the security of his
+stronghold, for he saw none. Jugglers he saw running up ladders that
+overtopped him, and air-balloons scaling the empyrean; but the
+former came precipitately down again, and the latter were at the
+mercy of the winds; while he remained tranquil on his solid
+unambitious ground, fitting his morality to the laws, his conscience
+to his morality, his comfort to his conscience. Not that voluntarily
+he cut himself off from his fellows: on the contrary, his sole
+amusement was their society. Alone he was rather dull, as a man who
+beholds but one thing must naturally be. Study of the animated
+varieties of that one thing excited him sufficiently to think life a
+pleasant play; and the faculties he had forfeited to hold his
+elevated position he could serenely enjoy by contemplation of them
+in others. Thus:--wonder at Master Richard's madness: though he
+himself did not experience it, he was eager to mark the effect on
+his beloved relatives. As he carried along his vindictive hunch of
+cake, he shaped out their different attitudes of amaze,
+bewilderment, horror; passing by some personal chagrin in the
+prospect. For his patron had projected a journey, commencing with
+Paris, culminating on the Alps, and lapsing in Rome: a delightful
+journey to show Richard the highways of History and tear him from
+the risk of further ignoble fascinations, that his spirit might be
+altogether bathed in freshness and revived. This had been planned
+during Richard's absence to surprise him.
+
+Now the dream of travel was to Adrian what the love of woman is to
+the race of young men. It supplanted that foolishness. It was his
+Romance, as we say; that buoyant anticipation on which in youth we
+ride the airs, and which, as we wax older and too heavy for our
+atmosphere, hardens to the Hobby, which, if an obstinate animal, is
+a safer horse, and conducts man at a slower pace to the sexton.
+Adrian had never travelled. He was aware that his romance was
+earthly and had discomforts only to be evaded by the one potent
+talisman possessed by his patron. His Alp would hardly be grand to
+him without an obsequious landlord in the foreground: he must
+recline on Mammon's imperial cushions in order to moralize
+becomingly on the ancient world. The search for pleasure at the
+expense of discomfort, as frantic lovers woo their mistresses to
+partake the shelter of a hut and batten on a crust, Adrian deemed
+the bitterness of beggarliness. Let his sweet mistress be given him
+in the pomp and splendour due to his superior emotions, or not at
+all. Consequently the wise youth had long nursed an ineffectual
+passion, and it argued a great nature in him, that at the moment
+when his wishes were to be crowned, he should look with such slight
+touches of spleen at the gorgeous composite fabric of Parisian
+cookery and Roman antiquities crumbling into unsubstantial mockery.
+Assuredly very few even of the philosophers would have turned away
+uncomplainingly to meaner delights the moment after.
+
+Hippias received the first portion of the cake.
+
+He was sitting by the window in his hotel, reading. He had fought
+down his breakfast with more than usual success, and was looking
+forward to his dinner at the Foreys' with less than usual timidity.
+
+"Ah! glad you've come, Adrian," he said, and expanded his chest. "I
+was afraid I should have to ride down. This is kind of you. We'll
+walk down together through the park. It's absolutely dangerous to
+walk alone in these streets. My opinion is, that orange-peel lasts
+all through the year now, and will till legislation puts a stop to
+it. I give you my word I slipped on a piece of orange-peel yesterday
+afternoon in Piccadilly, and I thought I was down! I saved myself by
+a miracle."
+
+"You have an appetite, I hope?" asked Adrian.
+
+"I think I shall get one, after a bit of a walk," chirped Hippias.
+"Yes. I think I feel hungry now."
+
+"Charmed to hear it," said Adrian, and began unpinning his parcel on
+his knees. "How should you define Folly?" he checked the process to
+inquire.
+
+"Hm!" Hippias meditated; he prided himself on being oracular when
+such questions were addressed to him. "I think I should define it to
+be a slide."
+
+"Very good definition. In other words, a piece of orange-peel; once
+on it, your life and limbs are in danger, and you are saved by a
+miracle. You must present that to the PILGRIM. And the monument of
+folly, what would that be?"
+
+Hippias meditated anew. "All the human race on one another's
+shoulders." He chuckled at the sweeping sourness of the instance.
+
+"Very good," Adrian applauded, "or in default of that, some symbol
+of the thing, say; such as this of which I have here brought you a
+chip."
+
+Adrian displayed the quarter of the cake.
+
+"This is the monument made portable--eh?"
+
+"Cake!" cried Hippias, retreating to his chair to dramatize his
+intense disgust. "You're right of them that eat it. If I--if I don't
+mistake," he peered at it, "the noxious composition bedizened in
+that way is what they call wedding-cake. It's arrant poison! Who is
+it you want to kill? What are you carrying such stuff about for?"
+
+Adrian rang the bell for a knife. "To present you with your due and
+proper portion. You will have friends and relatives, and can't be
+saved from them, not even by miracle. It is a habit which exhibits,
+perhaps, the unconscious inherent cynicism of the human mind, for
+people who consider that they have reached the acme of mundane
+felicity, to distribute this token of esteem to their friends, with
+the object probably" (he took the knife from a waiter and went to
+the table to slice the cake) "of enabling those friends (these
+edifices require very delicate incision--each particular currant and
+subtle condiment hangs to its neighbour--a wedding-cake is evidently
+the most highly civilized of cakes, and partakes of the evils as
+well as the advantages of civilization!)--I was saying, they send us
+these love-tokens, no doubt (we shall have to weigh out the crumbs,
+if each is to have his fair share) that we may the better estimate
+their state of bliss by passing some hours in purgatory. This, as
+far as I can apportion it without weights and scales, is your share,
+my uncle!"
+
+He pushed the corner of the table bearing the cake towards Hippias.
+
+"Get away!" Hippias vehemently motioned, and started from his chair.
+"I'll have none of it, I tell you! It's death! It's fifty times
+worse than that beastly compound Christmas pudding! What fool has
+been doing this, then? Who dares send me cake? Me! It's an insult."
+
+"You are not compelled to eat any before dinner," said Adrian,
+pointing the corner of the table after him, "but your share you must
+take, and appear to consume. One who has done so much to bring about
+the marriage cannot in conscience refuse his allotment of the
+fruits. Maidens, I hear, first cook it under their pillows, and
+extract nuptial dreams therefrom--said to be of a lighter class,
+taken that way. It's a capital cake, and, upon my honour, you have
+helped to make it--you have indeed! So here it is."
+
+The table again went at Hippias. He ran nimbly round it, and flung
+himself on a sofa exhausted, crying: "There!... My appetite's gone
+for to-day!"
+
+"Then shall I tell Richard that you won't touch a morsel of his
+cake?" said Adrian, leaning on his two hands over the table and
+looking at his uncle.
+
+"Richard?"
+
+"Yes, your nephew: my cousin: Richard! Your companion since you've
+been in town. He's married, you know. Married this morning at
+Kensington parish church, by licence, at half-past eleven of the
+clock, or twenty to twelve. Married, and gone to spend his honeymoon
+in the Isle of Wight: a very delectable place for a month's
+residence. I have to announce to you that, thanks to your
+assistance, the experiment is launched, sir!"----
+
+"Richard married!"
+
+There was something to think and to say in objection to it, but the
+wits of poor Hippias was softened by the shock. His hand travelled
+half-way to his forehead, spread out to smooth the surface of that
+seat of reason, and then fell.
+
+"Surely you knew all about it? you were so anxious to have him in
+town under your charge."
+
+"Married?" Hippias jumped up--he had it. "Why, he's under age! he's
+an infant."
+
+"So he is. But the infant is not the less married. Fib like a man
+and pay your fee--what does it matter? Any one who is breeched can
+obtain a licence in our noble country. And the interests of morality
+demand that it should not be difficult. Is it true--can you persuade
+anybody that you have known nothing about it?"
+
+"Ha! infamous joke! I wish, sir, you would play your pranks on
+somebody else," said Hippias, sternly, as he sank back on the sofa.
+"You've done me up for the day, I can assure you."
+
+Adrian sat down to instil belief by gentle degrees, and put an
+artistic finish to the work. He had the gratification of passing his
+uncle through varied contortions, and at last Hippias perspired in
+conviction, and exclaimed, "This accounts for his conduct to me.
+That boy must have a cunning nothing short of infernal! I feel ... I
+feel it just here," he drew a hand along his midriff.
+
+"I'm not equal to this world of fools," he added faintly, and shut
+his eyes. "No, I can't dine. Eat? ha! ... no. Go without me!"
+
+Shortly after Hippias went to bed, saying to himself, as he
+undressed, "See what comes of our fine schemes! Poor Austin!" and as
+the pillow swelled over his ears, "I'm not sure that a day's fast
+won't do me good." The Dyspepsy had bought his philosophy at a heavy
+price; he had a right to use it.
+
+Adrian resumed the procession of the cake.
+
+He sighted his melancholy uncle Algernon hunting an appetite in the
+Row, and looking as if the hope ahead of him were also one-legged.
+The Captain did not pass without querying the ungainly parcel.
+
+"I hope I carry it ostentatiously enough?" said Adrian. "Enclosed is
+wherewithal to quiet the alarm of the land. Now may the maids and
+wives of Merry England sleep secure. I had half a mind to fix it on
+a pole, and engage a band to parade it. This is our dear Richard's
+wedding-cake. Married at half-past eleven this morning, by licence,
+at the Kensington parish church; his own ring being lost he employed
+the ring of his beautiful bride's lachrymose landlady, she standing
+adjacent by the altar. His farewell to you as a bachelor, and hers
+as a maid, you can claim on the spot, if you think proper, and
+digest according to your powers."
+
+Algernon let off steam in a whistle. "Thompson, the solicitor's
+daughter!" he said. "I met them the other day, somewhere about here.
+He introduced me to her. A pretty little baggage."
+
+"No." Adrian set him right. "'Tis a Miss Desborough, a Roman
+Catholic dairymaid. Reminds one of pastoral England in the time of
+the Plantagenets! He's quite equal to introducing her as Thompson's
+daughter, and himself as Beelzebub's son. However, the wild animal
+is in Hymen's chains, and the cake is cut. Will you have your
+morsel?"
+
+"Oh, by all means!--not now." Algernon had an unwonted air of
+reflection.--"Father know it?"
+
+"Not yet. He will to-night by nine o'clock."
+
+"Then I must see him by seven. Don't say you met me." He nodded, and
+pricked his horse.
+
+"Wants money!" said Adrian, putting the combustible he carried once
+more in motion.
+
+The women were the crowning joy of his contemplative mind. He had
+reserved them for his final discharge. Dear demonstrative creatures!
+Dyspepsia would not weaken their poignant outcries, or self-interest
+check their fainting fits. On the generic woman one could calculate.
+Well might THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP say of her that, "She is always at
+Nature's breast"; not intending it as a compliment. Each woman is
+Eve throughout the ages; whereas the PILGRIM would have us believe
+that the Adam in men has become warier, if not wiser; and weak as he
+is, has learnt a lesson from time. Probably the PILGRIM'S meaning
+may be taken to be, that Man grows, and Woman does not.
+
+At any rate, Adrian hoped for such natural choruses as you hear in
+the nursery when a bauble is lost. He was awake to Mrs. Doria's
+maternal predestinations, and guessed that Clare stood ready with
+the best form of filial obedience. They were only a poor couple to
+gratify his Mephistophelian humour, to be sure, but Mrs. Doria was
+equal to twenty, and they would proclaim the diverse ways with which
+maidenhood and womanhood took disappointment, while the surrounding
+Forey girls and other females of the family assembly were expected
+to develop the finer shades and tapering edges of an agitation to
+which no woman could be cold.
+
+All went well. He managed cleverly to leave the cake unchallenged in
+a conspicuous part of the drawing-room, and stepped gaily down to
+dinner. Much of the conversation adverted to Richard. Mrs. Doria
+asked him if he had seen the youth, or heard of him.
+
+"Seen him? no! Heard of him? yes!" said Adrian. "I have heard of
+him. I heard that he was sublimely happy, and had eaten such a
+breakfast that dinner was impossible; claret and cold chicken, cake
+and"----
+
+"Cake at breakfast!" they all interjected.
+
+"That seems to be his fancy just now."
+
+"What an extraordinary taste!"
+
+"You know, he is educated on a System."
+
+One fast young male Forey allied the System and the cake in a
+miserable pun. Adrian, a hater of puns, looked at him, and held the
+table silent, as if he were going to speak; but he said nothing, and
+the young gentleman vanished from the conversation in a blush,
+extinguished by his own spark.
+
+Mrs. Doria peevishly exclaimed, "Oh! fish-cake, I suppose! I wish he
+understood a little better the obligations of relationship."
+
+"Whether he understands them, I can't say," observed Adrian, "but I
+assure you he is very energetic in extending them."
+
+The wise youth talked innuendoes whenever he had an opportunity,
+that his dear relative might be rendered sufficiently inflammable by
+and by at the aspect of the cake; but he was not thought more than
+commonly mysterious and deep.
+
+"Was his appointment at the house of those Grandison people?" Mrs.
+Doria asked, with a hostile upper-lip.
+
+Adrian warmed the blindfolded parties by replying, "Do they keep a
+beadle at the door?"
+
+Mrs. Doria's animosity to Mrs. Grandison made her treat this as a
+piece of satirical ingenuousness. "I daresay they do," she said.
+
+"And a curate on hand?"
+
+"Oh, I should think a dozen!"
+
+Old Mr. Forey advised his punning grandson Clarence to give that
+house a wide berth, where he might be disposed of and dished-up at a
+moment's notice, and the scent ran off at a jest.
+
+The Foreys gave good dinners, and with the old gentleman the
+excellent old fashion remained in permanence of trooping off the
+ladies as soon as they had taken their sustenance and just exchanged
+a smile with the flowers and the dessert, when they rose to fade
+with a beautiful accord, and the gallant males breathed under easier
+waistcoats, and settled to the business of the table, sure that an
+hour for unbosoming and imbibing was their own. Adrian took a chair
+by Brandon Forey, a barrister of standing.
+
+"I want to ask you," he said, "whether an infant in law can legally
+bind himself."
+
+"If he's old enough to affix his signature to an instrument, I
+suppose he can," yawned Brandon.
+
+"Is he responsible for his acts?"
+
+"I've no doubt we could hang him."
+
+"Then what he could do for himself, you could do for him?"
+
+"Not quite so much; pretty near."
+
+"For instance, he can marry?"
+
+"That's not a criminal case, you know."
+
+"And the marriage is valid?"
+
+"You can dispute it."
+
+"Yes, and the Greeks and the Trojans can fight. It holds then?"
+
+"Both water and fire!"
+
+The patriarch of the table sang out to Adrian that he stopped the
+vigorous circulation of the claret.
+
+"Dear me, sir!" said Adrian, "I beg pardon. The circumstances must
+excuse me. The fact is, my cousin Richard got married to a dairymaid
+this morning, and I wanted to know whether it held in law."
+
+It was amusing to watch the manly coolness with which the
+announcement was taken. Nothing was heard more energetic than,
+"Deuce he has!" and, "A dairymaid!"
+
+"I thought it better to let the ladies dine in peace," Adrian
+continued. "I wanted to be able to console my aunt"----
+
+"Well, but--well, but," the old gentleman, much the most excited,
+puffed--"eh, Brandon? He's a boy, this young ass! Do you mean to
+tell me a boy can go and marry when he pleases, and any trull he
+pleases, and the marriage is good? If I thought that I'd turn every
+woman off my premises. I would! from the housekeeper to the
+scullery-maid. I'd have no woman near him till--till"----
+
+"Till the young greenhorn was grey, sir?" suggested Brandon.
+
+"Till he knew what women are made of, sir!" the old gentleman
+finished his sentence vehemently. "What, d'ye think, will Feverel
+say to it, Mr. Adrian?"
+
+"He has been trying the very System you have proposed, sir--one that
+does not reckon on the powerful action of curiosity on the juvenile
+intelligence. I'm afraid it's the very worst way of solving the
+problem."
+
+"Of course it is," said Clarence. "None but a fool!"----
+
+"At your age," Adrian relieved his embarrassment, "it is natural, my
+dear Clarence, that you should consider the idea of an isolated or
+imprisoned manhood something monstrous, and we do not expect you to
+see what amount of wisdom it contains. You follow one extreme, and
+we the other. I don't say that a middle course exists. The history
+of mankind shows our painful efforts to find one, but they have
+invariably resolved themselves into asceticism, or laxity, acting
+and reacting. The moral question is, if a naughty little man, by
+reason of his naughtiness, releases himself from foolishness, does a
+foolish little man, by reason of his foolishness, save himself from
+naughtiness?"
+
+A discussion, peculiar to men of the world, succeeded the laugh at
+Mr. Clarence. Then coffee was handed round and the footman informed
+Adrian, in a low voice, that Mrs. Doria Forey particularly wished to
+speak with him. Adrian preferred not to go in alone. "Very well," he
+said, and sipped his coffee. They talked on, sounding the depths of
+law in Brandon Forey, and receiving nought but hollow echoes from
+that profound cavity. He would not affirm that the marriage was
+invalid: he would not affirm that it could not be annulled. He
+thought not: still he thought it would be worth trying. A
+consummated and a non-consummated union were two different
+things....
+
+"Dear me!" said Adrian, "does the Law recognize that? Why, that's
+almost human!"
+
+Another message was brought to Adrian that Mrs. Doria Forey _very_
+particularly wished to speak with him.
+
+"What can be the matter?" he exclaimed, pleased to have his faith in
+woman strengthened. The cake had exploded, no doubt.
+
+So it proved, when the gentlemen joined the fair society. All the
+younger ladies stood about the table, whereon the cake stood
+displayed, gaps being left for those sitting to feast their vision,
+and intrude the comments and speculations continually arising from
+fresh shocks of wonder at the unaccountable apparition. Entering
+with the half-guilty air of men who know they have come from a
+grosser atmosphere, the gallant males also ranged themselves round
+the common object of curiosity.
+
+"Here! Adrian!" Mrs. Doria cried. "Where is Adrian? Pray, come here.
+Tell me! Where did this cake come from? Whose is it? What does it do
+here? You know all about it, for you brought it. Clare saw you bring
+it into the room. What does it mean? I insist upon a direct answer.
+Now do not make me impatient, Adrian."
+
+Certainly Mrs. Doria was equal to twenty. By her concentrated
+rapidity and volcanic complexion it was evident that suspicion had
+kindled.
+
+"I was really bound to bring it," Adrian protested.
+
+"Answer me!"
+
+The wise youth bowed: "Categorically. This cake came from the house
+of a person, a female, of the name of Berry. It belongs to you
+partly, partly to me, partly to Clare, and to the rest of our
+family, on the principle of equal division: for which purpose it is
+present...."
+
+"Yes! Speak!"
+
+"It means, my dear aunt, what that kind of cake usually does mean."
+
+"This, then, is the Breakfast! And the ring! Adrian! where is
+Richard?"
+
+Mrs. Doria still clung to unbelief in the monstrous horror.
+
+But when Adrian told her that Richard had left town, her struggling
+hope sank. "The wretched boy has ruined himself!" she said, and sat
+down trembling.
+
+Oh! that System! The delicate vituperations gentle ladies use
+instead of oaths, Mrs. Doria showered on that System. She hesitated
+not to say that her brother had got what he deserved. Opinionated,
+morbid, weak, justice had overtaken him. Now he would see! but at
+what a price! at what a sacrifice!
+
+Mrs. Doria commanded Adrian to confirm her fears.
+
+Sadly the wise youth recapitulated Berry's words. "He was married
+this morning at half-past eleven of the clock, or twenty to twelve,
+by licence, at the Kensington parish church."
+
+"Then that was his appointment!" Mrs. Doria murmured.
+
+"That was the cake for breakfast!" breathed a second of her sex.
+
+"And it was his ring!" exclaimed a third.
+
+The men were silent, and made long faces.
+
+Clare stood cold and sedate. She and her mother avoided each other's
+eyes.
+
+"Is it that abominable country person, Adrian?"
+
+"The happy damsel is, I regret to say, the Papist dairymaid," said
+Adrian, in sorrowful but deliberate accents.
+
+Then arose a feminine hum, in the midst of which Mrs. Doria cried,
+"Brandon!" She was a woman of energy. Her thoughts resolved to
+action spontaneously.
+
+"Brandon," she drew the barrister a little aside, "can they not be
+followed, and separated? I want your advice. Cannot we separate
+them? A boy! it is really shameful if he should be allowed to fall
+into the toils of a designing creature to ruin himself irrevocably.
+Can we not, Brandon?"
+
+The worthy barrister felt inclined to laugh, but he answered her
+entreaties: "From what I hear of the young groom I should imagine
+the office perilous."
+
+"I'm speaking of law, Brandon. Can we not obtain an order from one
+of your Courts to pursue them and separate them instantly?"
+
+"This evening?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+Brandon was sorry to say she decidedly could not.
+
+"You might call on one of your Judges, Brandon."
+
+Brandon assured her that the Judges were a hard-worked race, and to
+a man slept heavily after dinner.
+
+"Will you do so to-morrow, the first thing in the morning? Will you
+promise me to do so, Brandon?--Or a magistrate! A magistrate would
+send a policeman after them. My dear Brandon! I beg--I beg you to
+assist us in this dreadful extremity. It will be the death of my
+poor brother. I believe he would forgive anything but this. You have
+no idea what his notions are of blood."
+
+Brandon tipped Adrian a significant nod to step in and aid.
+
+"What is it, aunt?" asked the wise youth. "You want them followed
+and torn asunder by wild policemen?"
+
+"To-morrow;" Brandon queerly interposed.
+
+"Won't that be--just too late?" Adrian suggested.
+
+Mrs. Doria sighed out her last spark of hope.
+
+"You see," said Adrian....
+
+"Yes! yes!" Mrs. Doria did not require any of his elucidations.
+"Pray be quiet, Adrian, and let me speak. Brandon! it cannot be!
+it's quite impossible! Can you stand there and tell me that boy is
+legally married? I never will believe it! The law cannot be so
+shamefully bad as to permit a boy--a mere child--to do such absurd
+things. Grandpapa!" she beckoned to the old gentleman. "Grandpapa!
+pray do make Brandon speak. These lawyers never will. He might stop
+it, if he would. If I were a man, do you think I would stand here?"
+
+"Well, my dear," the old gentleman toddled to compose her, "I'm
+quite of your opinion. I believe he knows no more than you or I. My
+belief is they none of them know anything till they join issue and
+go into Court. I want to see a few female lawyers."
+
+"To encourage the bankrupt perruquier, sir?" said Adrian. "They
+would have to keep a large supply of wigs on hand."
+
+"And you can jest, Adrian!" his aunt reproached him. "But I will not
+be beaten. I know--I am firmly convinced that no law would ever
+allow a boy to disgrace his family and ruin himself like that, and
+nothing shall persuade me that it is so. Now, tell me, Brandon, and
+pray do speak in answer to my questions, and please to forget you
+are dealing with a woman. _Can_ my nephew be rescued from the
+consequences of his folly? _Is_ what he has done legitimate? _Is_ he
+bound for life by what he has done while a boy?"
+
+"Well--a," Brandon breathed through his teeth. "A--hm! the matter's
+so very delicate, you see, Helen."
+
+"You're to forget that," Adrian remarked.
+
+"A--hm! well!" pursued Brandon. "Perhaps if you could arrest and
+divide them before nightfall, and make affidavit of certain
+facts"....
+
+"Yes?" the eager woman hastened his lagging mouth.
+
+"Well ... hm! a ... in that case ... a.... Or if a lunatic, you
+could prove him to have been of unsound mind."...
+
+"Oh! there's no doubt of his madness on _my_ mind, Brandon."
+
+"Yes! well! in that case.... Or if of different religious
+persuasions"....
+
+"She _is_ a Catholic!" Mrs. Doria joyfully interjected.
+
+"Yes! well! in that case ... objections might be taken to the form
+of the marriage.... Might be proved fictitious.... Or if he's under,
+say, eighteen years."
+
+"He _can't_ be much more," cried Mrs. Doria. "I think," she appeared
+to reflect, and then faltered imploringly to Adrian, "What is
+Richard's age?"
+
+The kind wise youth could not find it in his heart to strike away
+the phantom straw she caught at.
+
+"Oh! about that, I should fancy," he muttered, and found it
+necessary at the same time to duck and turn his head for
+concealment. Mrs. Doria surpassed his expectations.
+
+"Yes! well, then...." Brandon was resuming with a shrug, which was
+meant to say he still pledged himself to nothing, when Clare's voice
+was heard from out the buzzing circle of her cousins: "Richard is
+nineteen years and six months old to-day, mama."
+
+"Nonsense, child."
+
+"He is, mama." Clare's voice was very steadfast.
+
+"Non_sense_, I tell you. How _can_ you know?"
+
+"Richard is one year and nine months older than me, mama."
+
+Mrs. Doria fought the fact by years and finally by months. Clare was
+too strong for her.
+
+"Singular child!" she mentally apostrophized the girl who scornfully
+rejected straws while drowning.
+
+"But there's the religion still!" she comforted herself, and sat
+down to cogitate.
+
+The men smiled and looked vacuous.
+
+Music was proposed. There are times when soft music hath not charms;
+when it is put to as base uses as Imperial Caesar's dust and is taken
+to fill horrid pauses. Angelica Forey thumped the piano, and sang:
+"_I'm a laughing Gitana, ha--ha! ha--ha!_" Matilda Forey and her
+cousin Mary Bransburne wedded their voices, and songfully incited
+all young people to _Haste to the bower that love has built_, and
+defy the wise ones of the world; but the wise ones of the world were
+in a majority there, and very few places of assembly will be found
+where they are not; so the glowing appeal of the British
+ballad-monger passed into the bosom of the emptiness he addressed.
+Clare was asked to entertain the company. The singular child calmly
+marched to the instrument, and turned over the appropriate
+illustrations to the ballad-monger's repertory.
+
+Clare sang a little Irish air. Her duty done, she marched from the
+piano. Mothers are rarely deceived by their daughters in these
+matters; but Clare deceived her mother; and Mrs. Doria only
+persisted in feeling an agony of pity for her child, that she might
+the more warrantably pity herself--a not uncommon form of the
+emotion, for there is no juggler like that heart the ballad-monger
+puts into our mouths so boldly. Remember that she saw years of
+self-denial, years of a ripening scheme, rendered fruitless in a
+minute, and by the System which had almost reduced her to the
+condition of constitutional hypocrite. She had enough of bitterness
+to brood over, and some excuse for self-pity.
+
+Still, even when she was cooler, Mrs. Doria's energetic nature
+prevented her from giving up. Straws were straws, and the frailer
+they were the harder she clutched them.
+
+She rose from her chair, and left the room, calling to Adrian to
+follow her.
+
+"Adrian," she said, turning upon him in the passage, "you mentioned
+a house where this horrible cake ... where he was this morning. I
+desire you to take me to that woman immediately."
+
+The wise youth had not bargained for personal servitude. He had
+hoped he should be in time for the last act of the opera that night,
+after enjoying the comedy of real life.
+
+"My dear aunt" ... he was beginning to insinuate.
+
+"Order a cab to be sent for, and get your hat," said Mrs. Doria.
+
+There was nothing for it but to obey. He stamped his assent to the
+PILGRIM'S dictum, that Women are practical creatures, and now
+reflected on his own account, that relationship to a young fool may
+be a vexation and a nuisance. However, Mrs. Doria compensated him.
+
+What Mrs. Doria intended to do, the practical creature did not
+plainly know; but her energy positively demanded to be used in some
+way or other, and her instinct directed her to the offender on whom
+she could use it in wrath. She wanted somebody to be angry with,
+somebody to abuse. She dared not abuse her brother to his face: him
+she would have to console. Adrian was a fellow-hypocrite to the
+System, and would, she was aware, bring her into painfully delicate,
+albeit highly philosophic, ground by a discussion of the case. So
+she drove to Bessy Berry simply to inquire whither her nephew had
+flown.
+
+When a soft woman, and that soft woman a sinner, is matched with a
+woman of energy, she does not show much fight, and she meets no
+mercy. Bessy Berry's creditor came to her in female form that night.
+She then beheld it in all its terrors. Hitherto it had appeared to
+her as a male, a disembodied spirit of her imagination possessing
+male attributes, and the peculiar male characteristic of being
+moved, and ultimately silenced, by tears. As female, her creditor
+was terrible indeed. Still, had it not been a late hour, Bessy Berry
+would have died rather than speak openly that her babes had sped to
+make their nest in the Isle of Wight. They had a long start, they
+were out of the reach of pursuers, they were safe, and she told what
+she had to tell. She told more than was wise of her to tell. She
+made mention of her early service in the family, and of her little
+pension. Alas! her little pension! Her creditor had come expecting
+no payment--come, as creditors are wont in such moods, just to take
+it out of her--to employ the familiar term. At once Mrs. Doria
+pounced upon the pension.
+
+"That, of course, you know is at an end," she said in the calmest
+manner, and Berry did not plead for the little bit of bread to her.
+She only asked a little consideration for her feelings.
+
+True admirers of women had better stand aside from the scene.
+Undoubtedly it was very sad for Adrian to be compelled to witness
+it. Mrs. Doria was not generous. The PILGRIM may be wrong about the
+sex not growing; but its fashion of conducting warfare we must allow
+to be barbarous, and according to what is deemed the pristine, or
+wild cat, method. Ruin, nothing short of it, accompanied poor Berry
+to her bed that night, and her character bled till morning on her
+pillow.
+
+The scene over, Adrian reconducted Mrs. Doria to her home. Mice had
+been at the cake during her absence apparently. The ladies and
+gentlemen present put it on the greedy mice, who were accused of
+having gorged and gone to bed.
+
+"I'm sure they're quite welcome," said Mrs. Doria. "It's a farce,
+this marriage, and Adrian has quite come to my way of thinking. I
+would not touch an atom of it. Why, they were married in a married
+woman's ring! Can _that_ be legal, as you call it? Oh, I'm
+convinced! Don't tell me. Austin will be in town to-morrow, and if
+he is true to his principles, he will instantly adopt measures to
+rescue his son from infamy. I want no legal advice. I go upon common
+sense, common decency. This marriage is false."
+
+Mrs. Doria's fine scheme had become so much a part of her life, that
+she could not give it up. She took Clare to her bed, and caressed
+and wept over her, as she would not have done had she known the
+singular child, saying, "Poor Richard! my dear poor boy! we must
+save him, Clare! we must save him!" Of the two the mother showed the
+greater want of iron on this occasion. Clare lay in her arms rigid
+and emotionless, with one of her hands tight-locked. All she said
+was: "I knew it in the morning, mama." She slept clasping Richard's
+nuptial ring.
+
+By this time all specially concerned in the System knew it. The
+honeymoon was shining placidly above them. Is not happiness like
+another circulating medium? When we have a very great deal of it,
+some poor hearts are aching for what is taken away from them. When
+we have gone out and seized it on the highways, certain inscrutable
+laws are sure to be at work to bring us to the criminal bar, sooner
+or later. Who knows the honeymoon that did not steal somebody's
+sweetness? Richard Turpin went forth, singing "Money or life" to the
+world: Richard Feverel has done the same, substituting "Happiness"
+for "Money," frequently synonyms. The coin he wanted he would have,
+and was just as much a highway robber as his fellow Dick, so that
+those who have failed to recognize him as a hero before, may now
+regard him in that light. Meanwhile the world he has squeezed looks
+exceedingly patient and beautiful. His coin chinks delicious music
+to him. Nature and the order of things on earth have no warmer
+admirer than a jolly brigand or a young man made happy by the Jews.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+NURSING THE DEVIL
+
+
+And now the author of the System was on trial under the eyes of the
+lady who loved him. What so kind as they? Yet are they very
+rigorous, those soft watchful woman's eyes. If you are below the
+measure they have made of you, you will feel it in the fulness of
+time. She cannot but show you that she took you for a giant, and has
+had to come down a bit. You feel yourself strangely diminishing in
+those sweet mirrors, till at last they drop on you complacently
+level. But, oh, beware, vain man, of ever waxing enamoured of that
+wonderful elongation of a male creature you saw reflected in her
+adoring upcast orbs! Beware of assisting to delude her! A woman who
+is not quite a fool will forgive your being but a man, if you are
+surely that: she will haply learn to acknowledge that no mortal
+tailor could have fitted that figure she made of you respectably,
+and that practically (though she sighs to think it) her ideal of
+you was on the pattern of an overgrown charity-boy in the regulation
+jacket and breech. For this she first scorns the narrow capacities
+of the tailor, and then smiles at herself. But shouldst thou, when
+the hour says plainly, Be thyself, and the woman is willing to take
+thee as thou art, shouldst thou still aspire to be that thing of
+shanks and wrists, wilt thou not seem contemptible as well as
+ridiculous? And when the fall comes, will it not be flat on thy
+face, instead of to the common height of men? You may fall miles
+below her measure of you, and be safe: nothing is damaged save an
+overgrown charity-boy; but if you fall below the common height of
+men, you must make up your mind to see her rustle her gown, spy at
+the looking-glass, and transfer her allegiance. The moral of which
+is, that if we pretend to be what we are not, woman, for whose
+amusement the farce is performed, will find us out and punish us for
+it. And it is usually the end of a sentimental dalliance.
+
+Had Sir Austin given vent to the pain and wrath it was natural he
+should feel, he might have gone to unphilosophic excesses, and,
+however much he lowered his reputation as a sage, Lady Blandish
+would have excused him: she would not have loved him less for seeing
+him closer. But the poor gentleman tasked his soul and stretched his
+muscles to act up to her conception of him. He, a man of science in
+life, who was bound to be surprised by nothing in nature, it was not
+for him to do more than lift his eyebrows and draw in his lips at
+the news delivered by Ripton Thompson, that ill bird at Raynham.
+
+All he said, after Ripton had handed the letters and carried his
+penitential headache to bed, was: "You see, Emmeline, it is useless
+to base any system on a human being."
+
+A very philosophical remark for one who has been busily at work
+building for nearly twenty years. Too philosophical to seem genuine.
+It revealed where the blow struck sharpest. Richard was no longer
+the Richard of his creation--his pride and his joy--but simply a
+human being with the rest. The bright star had sunk among the mass.
+
+And yet, what had the young man done? And in what had the System
+failed?
+
+The lady could not but ask herself this, while she condoled with the
+offended father.
+
+"My friend," she said, tenderly taking his hand before she retired,
+"I know how deeply you must be grieved. I know what your
+disappointment must be. I do not beg of you to forgive him now. You
+cannot doubt his love for this young person, and according to his
+light, has he not behaved honourably, and as you would have wished,
+rather than bring her to shame? You will think of that. It has been
+an accident--a misfortune--a terrible misfortune"....
+
+"The God of this world is in the machine--not out of it," Sir Austin
+interrupted her, and pressed her hand to get the good-night over.
+
+At any other time her mind would have been arrested to admire the
+phrase; now it seemed perverse, vain, false, and she was tempted to
+turn the meaning that was in it against himself, much as she pitied
+him.
+
+"You know, Emmeline," he added, "I believe very little in the
+fortune, or misfortune, to which men attribute their successes and
+reverses. They are useful impersonations to novelists; but my
+opinion is sufficiently high of flesh and blood to believe that we
+make our own history without intervention. Accidents?--Terrible
+misfortunes?--What are they?--Good-night."
+
+"Good-night," she said, looking sad and troubled. "When I said,
+'misfortune,' I meant, of course, that he is to blame, but--shall I
+leave you his letter to me?"
+
+"I think I have enough to meditate upon," he replied, coldly bowing.
+
+"God bless you," she whispered. "And--may I say it? do not shut your
+heart."
+
+He assured her that he hoped not to do so, and the moment she was
+gone he set about shutting it as tight as he could.
+
+If, instead of saying, Base no system on a human being, he had said,
+Never experimentalize with one, he would have been nearer the truth
+of his own case. He had experimented on humanity in the person of
+the son he loved as his life, and at once, when the experiment
+appeared to have failed, all humanity's failings fell on the
+shoulders of his son. Richard's parting laugh in the train--it was
+explicable now: it sounded in his ears like the mockery of this base
+nature of ours at every endeavor to exalt and chasten it. The young
+man had plotted this. From step to step Sir Austin traced the plot.
+The curious mask he had worn since his illness; the selection of his
+incapable uncle Hippias for a companion in preference to Adrian; it
+was an evident, well-perfected plot. That hideous laugh would not be
+silenced. Base, like the rest, treacherous, a creature of passions
+using his abilities solely to gratify them--never surely had
+humanity such chances as in him! A Manichaean tendency, from which
+the sententious eulogist of nature had been struggling for years
+(and which was partly at the bottom of the System), now began to
+cloud and usurp dominion of his mind. As he sat alone in the forlorn
+dead-hush of his library, he saw the devil.
+
+How are we to know when we are at the head and fountain of the fates
+of them we love?
+
+There by the springs of Richard's future, his father sat: and the
+devil said to him: "Only be quiet: do nothing: resolutely do
+nothing: your object now is to keep a brave face to the world, so
+that all may know you superior to this human nature that has
+deceived you. For it is the shameless deception, not the marriage,
+that has wounded you."
+
+"Ay!" answered the baronet, "the shameless deception, not the
+marriage: wicked and ruinous as it must be; a destroyer of my
+tenderest hopes! my dearest schemes! Not the marriage--the shameless
+deception!" and he crumpled up his son's letter to him, and tossed
+it into the fire.
+
+How are we to distinguish the dark chief of the Manichaeans when he
+talks our own thoughts to us?
+
+Further he whispered, "And your System:--if you would be brave to
+the world, have courage to cast the dream of it out of you:
+relinquish an impossible project; see it as it is--dead: too good
+for men!"
+
+"Ay!" muttered the baronet: "all who would save them perish on the
+Cross!"
+
+And so he sat nursing the devil.
+
+By and by he took his lamp, and put on the old cloak and cap, and
+went to gaze at Ripton. That exhausted debauchee and youth without a
+destiny slept a dead sleep. A handkerchief was bound about his
+forehead, and his helpless sunken chin and snoring nose projected up
+the pillow, made him look absurdly piteous. The baronet remembered
+how often he had compared his boy with this one: his own bright boy!
+And where was the difference between them?
+
+"Mere outward gilding!" said his familiar.
+
+"Yes," he responded, "I daresay this one never positively plotted to
+deceive his father: he followed his appetites unchecked, and is
+internally the sounder of the two."
+
+Ripton, with his sunken chin and snoring nose under the light of the
+lamp, stood for human nature, honest, however abject.
+
+"Miss Random, I fear very much, is a necessary establishment!"
+whispered the monitor.
+
+"Does the evil in us demand its natural food, or it corrupts the
+whole?" ejaculated Sir Austin. "And is no angel of avail till that
+is drawn off? And is that our conflict--to see whether we can escape
+the contagion of its embrace, and come uncorrupted out of that?"
+
+"The world is wise in its way," said the voice.
+
+"Though it look on itself through Port wine?" he suggested,
+remembering his lawyer Thompson.
+
+"Wise in not seeking to be too wise," said the voice.
+
+"And getting intoxicated on its drug of comfort!"
+
+"Human nature is weak."
+
+"And Miss Random is an establishment, and Wild Oats an institution!"
+
+"It always has been so."
+
+"And always will be?"
+
+"So I fear! in spite of your very noble efforts."
+
+"And leads--whither? And ends--where?"
+
+Richard's laugh, taken up by horrid reverberations, as it were
+through the lengths of the Lower Halls, replied.
+
+This colloquy of two voices in a brain was concluded by Sir Austin
+asking again if there were no actual difference between the flower
+of his hopes and yonder drunken weed, and receiving for answer that
+there was a decided dissimilarity in the smell of the couple;
+becoming cognizant of which he retreated.
+
+Sir Austin did not battle with the tempter. He took him into his
+bosom at once, as if he had been ripe for him, and received his
+suggestions and bowed to his dictates. Because he suffered, and
+decreed that he would suffer silently, and be the only sufferer, it
+seemed to him that he was great-minded in his calamity. He had stood
+against the world. The world had beaten him. What then? He must shut
+his heart and mask his face; that was all. To be far in advance of
+the mass, is as fruitless to mankind, he reflected, as straggling in
+the rear. For how do we know that they move behind us at all, or
+move in our track? What we win for them is lost; and where we are
+overthrown we lie!
+
+It was thus that a fine mind and a fine heart at the bounds of a
+nature not great, chose to colour his retrogression and countenance
+his shortcoming; and it was thus that he set about ruining the work
+he had done. He might well say, as he once did, that there are hours
+when the clearest soul becomes a cunning fox. For a grief that was
+private and peculiar, he unhesitatingly cast the blame upon
+humanity; just as he had accused it in the period of what he termed
+his own ordeal. How had he borne that? By masking his face. And he
+prepared the ordeal for his son by doing the same. This was by no
+means his idea of a man's duty in tribulation, about which he could
+be strenuously eloquent. But it was his instinct so to act, and in
+times of trial great natures alone are not at the mercy of their
+instincts. Moreover it would cost him pain to mask his face; pain
+worse than that he endured when there still remained an object for
+him to open his heart to in proportion; and he always reposed upon
+the Spartan comfort of bearing pain and being passive. "Do nothing,"
+said the devil he nursed; which meant in his case, "Take me into you
+and don't cast me out." Excellent and sane is the outburst of wrath
+to men, when it stops short of slaughter. For who that locks it up
+to eat in solitary, can say that it is consumed? Sir Austin had as
+weak a digestion for wrath, as poor Hippias for a green duckling.
+Instead of eating it, it ate him. The wild beast in him was not the
+less deadly because it did not roar, and the devil in him not the
+less active because he resolved to do nothing.
+
+He sat at the springs of Richard's future, in the forlorn dead-hush
+of his library there, hearing the cinders click in the extinguished
+fire, and that humming stillness in which one may fancy one hears
+the midnight Fates busily stirring their embryos. The lamp glowed
+mildly on the bust of Chatham.
+
+Toward morning a gentle knock fell at his door. Lady Blandish glided
+in. With hasty step she came straight to him, and took both his
+hands.
+
+"My friend," she said, speaking tearfully, and trembling, "I feared
+I should find you here. I could not sleep. How is it with you?"
+
+"Well! Emmeline, well!" he replied, torturing his brows to fix the
+mask.
+
+He wished it had been Adrian who had come to him. He had an
+extraordinary longing for Adrian's society. He knew that the wise
+youth would divine how to treat him, and he mentally confessed to
+just enough weakness to demand a certain kind of management.
+Besides, Adrian, he had not a doubt, would accept him entirely as he
+seemed, and not pester him in any way by trying to unlock his heart;
+whereas a woman, he feared, would be waxing too womanly, and
+swelling from tears and supplications to a scene, of all things
+abhorred by him the most. So he rapped the floor with his foot, and
+gave the lady no very welcome face when he said it was well with
+him.
+
+She sat down by his side, still holding one hand firmly, and softly
+detaining the other.
+
+"Oh, my friend! may I believe you? May I speak to you?" She leaned
+close to him. "You know my heart. I have no better ambition than to
+be your friend. Surely I divide your grief, and may I not claim your
+confidence? Who has wept more over your great and dreadful sorrows?
+I would not have come to you, but I do believe that sorrow shared
+relieves the burden, and it is now that you may feel a woman's aid,
+and something of what a woman could be to you." ...
+
+"Be assured," he gravely said, "I thank you, Emmeline, for your
+intentions."
+
+"No, no! not for my intentions! And do not thank me. Think of him ...
+think of your dear boy.... Our Richard, as we have called him.--Oh!
+do not think it a foolish superstition of mine, but I have had a
+thought this night that has kept me in torment till I rose to speak
+to you.... Tell me first you have forgiven him."
+
+"A father bears no malice to his son, Emmeline."
+
+"Your heart has forgiven him?"
+
+"My heart has taken what he gave."
+
+"And quite forgiven him?"
+
+"You will hear no complaints of mine."
+
+The lady paused despondingly, and looked at him in a wistful manner,
+saying with a sigh, "Yes! I know how noble you are, and different
+from others!"
+
+He drew one of his hands from her relaxed hold.
+
+"You ought to be in bed, Emmeline."
+
+"I cannot sleep."
+
+"Go, and talk to me another time."
+
+"No, it must be now. You have helped me when I struggled to rise
+into a clearer world, and I think, humble as I am, I can help you
+now. I have had a thought this night that if you do not pray for him
+and bless him ... it will end miserably. My friend, have you done
+so?"
+
+He was stung and offended, and could hardly help showing it in spite
+of his mask.
+
+"Have you done so, Austin?"
+
+"This is assuredly a new way of committing fathers to the follies of
+their sons, Emmeline!"
+
+"No, not that. But will you pray for your boy, and bless him, before
+the day comes?"
+
+He restrained himself to pronounce his words calmly:--"And I must do
+this, or it will end in misery? How else can it end? Can I save him
+from the seed he has sown? Consider, Emmeline, what you say. He has
+repeated his cousin's sin. You see the end of that."...
+
+"Oh, so different! This young person is _not_, is _not_ of the class
+poor Austin Wentworth allied himself to. Indeed it is different. And
+he--be just and admit his nobleness. I fancied you did. This young
+person has great beauty, she has the elements of good breeding,
+she--indeed I think, had she been in another position, you would not
+have looked upon her unfavourably."
+
+"She may be too good for my son!" The baronet spoke with sublime
+bitterness.
+
+"No woman is too good for Richard, and you know it."
+
+"Pass her."
+
+"Yes, I will speak only of him. He met her by a fatal accident. We
+thought his love dead, and so did he till he saw her again. He met
+her, he thought we were plotting against him, he thought he should
+lose her for ever, and in the madness of an hour he did this." ...
+
+"My Emmeline pleads bravely for clandestine matches."
+
+"Ah! do not trifle, my friend. Say: would you have had him act as
+young men in his position generally do to young women beneath them?"
+
+Sir Austin did not like the question. It probed him very severely.
+
+"You mean," he said, "that fathers must fold their arms, and either
+submit to infamous marriages, or have these creatures ruined."
+
+"I do _not_ mean that," exclaimed the lady, striving for what she
+did mean, and how to express it. "I mean that ... he loved her. Is
+it not a madness at his age? But what I chiefly mean is--save him
+from the consequences. No, you shall not withdraw your hand. Think
+of his pride, his sensitiveness, his great wild nature--wild when he
+is set wrong: think how intense it is, set upon love; think, my
+friend, do not forget his love for you."
+
+Sir Austin smiled an admirable smile of pity.
+
+"That I should save him, or any one, from consequences, is asking
+more than the order of things will allow to you, Emmeline, and is
+not in the disposition of this world. I cannot. Consequences are the
+natural offspring of acts. My child, you are talking sentiment,
+which is the distraction of our modern age in everything--a
+phantasmal vapour distorting the image of the life we live. You ask
+me to give him a golden age in spite of himself. All that could be
+done, by keeping him in the paths of virtue and truth, I did. He is
+become a man, and as a man he must reap his own sowing."
+
+The baffled lady sighed. He sat so rigid: he spoke so securely, as
+if wisdom were to him more than the love of his son. And yet he did
+love his son. Feeling sure that he loved his son while he spoke so
+loftily, she reverenced him still, baffled as she was, and sensible
+that she had been quibbled with.
+
+"All I ask of you is to open your heart to him," she said.
+
+He kept silent.
+
+"Call him a man,--he is, and must ever be the child of your
+education, my friend."
+
+"You would console me, Emmeline, with the prospect that, if he ruins
+himself, he spares the world of young women. Yes, that is
+something!"
+
+Closely she scanned the mask. It was impenetrable. He could meet her
+eyes, and respond to the pressure of her hand, and smile, and not
+show what he felt. Nor did he deem it hypocritical to seek to
+maintain his elevation in her soft soul, by simulating supreme
+philosophy over offended love. Nor did he know that he had an angel
+with him then: a blind angel, and a weak one, but one who struck
+upon his chance.
+
+"Am I pardoned for coming to you?" she said, after a pause.
+
+"Surely I can read my Emmeline's intentions," he gently replied.
+
+"Very poor ones. I feel my weakness. I cannot utter half I have been
+thinking. Oh, if I could!"
+
+"You speak very well, Emmeline."
+
+"At least, I am pardoned!"
+
+"Surely so."
+
+"And before I leave you, dear friend, shall I be forgiven?--may I
+beg it?--will you bless him?"
+
+He was again silent.
+
+"Pray for him, Austin! pray for him ere the night is over."
+
+As she spoke she slid down to his feet and pressed his hand to her
+bosom.
+
+The baronet was startled. In very dread of the soft fit that wooed
+him, he pushed back his chair, and rose, and went to the window.
+
+"It's day already!" he said with assumed vivacity, throwing open the
+shutters, and displaying the young light on the lawn.
+
+Lady Blandish dried her tears as she knelt, and then joined him, and
+glanced up silently at Richard's moon standing in wane toward the
+West. She hoped it was because of her having been premature in
+pleading so earnestly, that she had failed to move him, and she
+accused herself more than the baronet. But in acting as she had
+done, she had treated him as no common man, and she was compelled to
+perceive that his heart was at present hardly superior to the hearts
+of ordinary men, however composed his face might be, and apparently
+serene his wisdom. From that moment she grew critical of him, and
+began to study her idol--a process dangerous to idols. He, now that
+she seemed to have relinquished the painful subject, drew to her,
+and as one who wished to smooth a foregone roughness, murmured:
+"God's rarest blessing is, after all, a good woman! My Emmeline
+bears her sleepless night well. She does not shame the day." He
+gazed down on her with a fondling tenderness.
+
+"I could bear many, many!" she replied, meeting his eyes, "and you
+would see me look better and better, if ... if only ..." but she had
+no encouragement to end the sentence.
+
+Perhaps he wanted some mute form of consolation; perhaps the
+handsome placid features of the dark-eyed dame touched him: at any
+rate their Platonism was advanced by his putting an arm about her.
+She felt the arm and talked of the morning.
+
+Thus proximate, they by and by both heard something very like a
+groan behind them, and looking round, beheld the Saurian eye. Lady
+Blandish smiled, but the baronet's discomposure was not to be
+concealed. By a strange fatality every stage of their innocent loves
+was certain to have a human beholder.
+
+"Oh, I'm sure I beg pardon," Benson mumbled, arresting his head in a
+melancholy pendulosity. He was ordered out of the room.
+
+"And I think I shall follow him, and try to get forty winks," said
+Lady Blandish. They parted with a quiet squeeze of hands.
+
+The baronet then called in Benson.
+
+"Get me my breakfast as soon as you can," he said, regardless of the
+aspect of injured conscience Benson sombrely presented to him. "I am
+going to town early. And, Benson," he added, "you will also go to
+town this afternoon, or to-morrow, if it suits you, and take your
+book with you to Mr. Thompson. You will not return here. A provision
+will be made for you. You can go."
+
+The heavy butler essayed to speak, but the tremendous blow and the
+baronet's gesture choked him. At the door he made another effort
+which shook the rolls of his loose skin pitiably. An impatient
+signal sent him out dumb,--and Raynham was quit of the one believer
+in the Great Shaddock dogma.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+CONQUEST OF AN EPICURE
+
+
+It was the month of July. The Solent ran up green waves before a
+full-blowing South-wester. Gay little yachts bounded out like foam,
+and flashed their sails, light as sea-nymphs. A crown of deep Summer
+blue topped the flying mountains of cloud.
+
+By an open window that looked on the brine through nodding roses,
+our young bridal pair were at breakfast, regaling worthily, both of
+them. Had the Scientific Humanist observed them, he could not have
+contested the fact, that as a couple who had set up to be father and
+mother of Britons, they were doing their duty. Files of egg-cups
+with disintegrated shells bore witness to it, and they were still at
+work, hardly talking from rapidity of exercise. Both were dressed
+for an expedition. She had her bonnet on, and he his yachting-hat.
+His sleeves were turned over at the wrists, and her gown showed its
+lining on her lap. At times a chance word might spring a laugh, but
+eating was the business of the hour, as I would have you to know it
+always will be where Cupid is in earnest. Tribute flowed in to them
+from the subject land. Neglected lies Love's penny-whistle on which
+they played so prettily and charmed the spheres to hear them. What
+do they care for the spheres, who have one another? Come, eggs!
+come, bread and butter! come, tea with sugar in it and milk! and
+welcome, the jolly hours. That is a fair interpretation of the music
+in them just now. Yonder instrument was good only for the overture.
+After all, what finer aspiration can lovers have, than to be free
+man and woman in the heart of plenty? And is it not a glorious level
+to have attained? Ah, wretched Scientific Humanist! not to be by and
+mark the admirable sight of these young creatures feeding. It would
+have been a spell to exorcise the Manichee, methinks.
+
+The mighty performance came to an end, and then, with a flourish of
+his table-napkin, husband stood over wife, who met him on the
+confident budding of her mouth. The poetry of mortals is their daily
+prose. Is it not a glorious level to have attained? A short,
+quick-blooded kiss, radiant, fresh, and honest as Aurora, and then
+Richard says without lack of cheer, "No letter to-day, my Lucy!"
+whereat her sweet eyes dwell on him a little seriously, but he
+cries, "Never mind! he'll be coming down himself some morning. He
+has only to know her, and all's well! eh?" and so saying he puts a
+hand beneath her chin, and seems to frame her fair face in fancy,
+she smiling up to be looked at.
+
+"But one thing I do want to ask my darling," says Lucy, and dropped
+into his bosom with hands of petition. "Take me on board his yacht
+with him to-day--not leave me with those people! Will he? I'm a good
+sailor, he knows!"
+
+"The best afloat!" laughs Richard, hugging her, "but, you know, you
+darling bit of a sailor, they don't allow more than a certain number
+on board for the race, and if they hear you've been with me,
+there'll be cries of foul play! Besides, there's Lady Judith to talk
+to you about Austin, and Lord Mountfalcon's compliments for you to
+listen to, and Mr. Morton to take care of you."
+
+Lucy's eyes fixed sideways an instant.
+
+"I hope I don't frown and blush as I did?" she said, screwing her
+pliable brows up to him winningly, and he bent his cheek against
+hers, and murmured something delicious.
+
+"And we shall be separated for--how many hours? one, two, three
+hours!" she pouted to his flatteries.
+
+"And then I shall come on board to receive my bride's
+congratulations."
+
+"And then my husband will talk all the time to Lady Judith."
+
+"And then I shall see my wife frowning and blushing at Lord
+Mountfalcon."
+
+"Am I so foolish, Richard?" she forgot her trifling to ask in an
+earnest way, and had another Aurorean kiss, just brushing the dew on
+her lips, for answer.
+
+After hiding a month in shyest shade, the pair of happy sinners had
+wandered forth one day to look on men and marvel at them, and had
+chanced to meet Mr. Morton of Poer Hall, Austin Wentworth's friend,
+and Ralph's uncle. Mr. Morton had once been intimate with the
+baronet, but had given him up for many years as impracticable and
+hopeless, for which reason he was the more inclined to regard
+Richard's misdemeanour charitably, and to lay the faults of the son
+on the father; and thinking society to be the one thing requisite to
+the young man, he had introduced him to the people he knew in the
+island; among others to the Lady Judith Felle, a fair young dame,
+who introduced him to Lord Mountfalcon, a puissant nobleman; who
+introduced him to the yachtsmen beginning to congregate; so that in
+a few weeks he found himself in the centre of a brilliant company,
+and for the first time in his life tasted what it was to have free
+intercourse with his fellow-creatures of both sexes. The son of a
+System was, therefore, launched; not only through the surf, but in
+deep waters.
+
+Now the baronet had so far compromised between the recurrence of his
+softer feelings and the suggestions of his new familiar, that he had
+determined to act toward Richard with justness. The world called it
+magnanimity, and even Lady Blandish had some thoughts of the same
+kind when she heard that he had decreed to Richard a handsome
+allowance, and had scouted Mrs. Doria's proposal for him to contest
+the legality of the marriage; but Sir Austin knew well he was simply
+just in not withholding money from a youth so situated. And here
+again the world deceived him by embellishing his conduct. For what
+is it to be just to whom we love! He knew it was not magnanimous,
+but the cry of the world somehow fortified him in the conceit that
+in dealing perfect justice to his son he was doing all that was
+possible, because so much more than common fathers would have done.
+He had shut his heart.
+
+Consequently Richard did not want money. What he wanted more, and
+did not get, was a word from his father, and though he said nothing
+to sadden his young bride, she felt how much it preyed upon him to
+be at variance with the man whom, now that he had offended him and
+gone against him, he would have fallen on his knees to; the man who
+was as no other man to him. She heard him of nights when she lay by
+his side, and the darkness, and the broken mutterings, of those
+nights clothed the figure of the strange stern man in her mind. Not
+that it affected the appetites of the pretty pair. We must not
+expect that of Cupid enthroned and in condition; under the influence
+of sea-air, too. The files of egg-cups laugh at such an idea. Still
+the worm did gnaw them. Judge, then, of their delight when, on this
+pleasant morning, as they were issuing from the garden of their
+cottage to go down to the sea, they caught sight of Tom Bakewell
+rushing up the road with a portmanteau on his shoulders, and, some
+distance behind him, discerned Adrian.
+
+"It's all right!" shouted Richard, and ran off to meet him, and
+never left his hand till he had hauled him up, firing questions at
+him all the way, to where Lucy stood.
+
+"Lucy! this is Adrian, my cousin."--"Isn't he an angel?" his eyes
+seemed to add; while Lucy's clearly answered, "That he is!"
+
+The full-bodied angel ceremoniously bowed to her, and acted with
+reserved unction the benefactor he saw in their greetings. "I think
+we are not strangers," he was good enough to remark, and very
+quickly let them know he had not breakfasted; on hearing which they
+hurried him into the house, and Lucy put herself in motion to have
+him served.
+
+"Dear old Rady," said Richard, tugging at his hand again, "how glad
+I am you've come! I don't mind telling you we've been horridly
+wretched."
+
+"Six, seven, eight, nine eggs," was Adrian's comment on a survey of
+the breakfast-table.
+
+"Why wouldn't he write? Why didn't he answer one of my letters? But
+here you are, so I don't mind now. He wants to see us, does he?
+We'll go up to-night. I've a match on at eleven; my little
+yacht--I've called her the 'Blandish'--against Fred Currie's
+'Begum.' I shall beat, but whether I do or not, we'll go up
+to-night. What's the news? What are they all doing?"
+
+"My dear boy!" Adrian returned, sitting comfortably down, "let me
+put myself a little more on an equal footing with you before I
+undertake to reply. Half that number of eggs will be sufficient for
+an unmarried man, and then we'll talk. They're all very well, as
+well as I can recollect after the shaking my total vacuity has had
+this morning. I came over by the first boat, and the sea, the sea
+has made me love mother earth, and desire of her fruits."
+
+Richard fretted restlessly opposite his cool relative.
+
+"Adrian! what did he say when he heard of it? I want to know exactly
+what words he said."
+
+"Well says the sage, my son! 'Speech is the small change of
+Silence.' He said less than I do."
+
+"That's how he took it!" cried Richard, and plunged in meditation.
+
+Soon the table was cleared, and laid out afresh, and Lucy preceded
+the maid bearing eggs on the tray, and sat down unbonneted, and like
+a thorough-bred housewife, to pour out the tea for him.
+
+"Now, we'll commence," said Adrian, tapping his egg with meditative
+cheerfulness; but his expression soon changed to one of pain, all
+the more alarming for his benevolent efforts to conceal it. Could it
+be possible the egg was bad? oh, horror! Lucy watched him, and
+waited in trepidation.
+
+"This egg has boiled three minutes and three-quarters," he observed,
+ceasing to contemplate it.
+
+"Dear, dear!" said Lucy, "I boiled them myself exactly that time.
+Richard likes them so. And you like them hard, Mr. Harley?"
+
+"On the contrary, I like them soft. Two minutes and a half, or
+three-quarters at the outside. An egg should never rashly verge upon
+hardness--never. Three minutes is the excess of temerity."
+
+"If Richard had told me! If I had only known!" the lovely little
+hostess interjected ruefully, biting her lip.
+
+"We mustn't expect him to pay attention to such matters," said
+Adrian, trying to smile.
+
+"Hang it! there are more eggs in the house," cried Richard, and
+pulled savagely at the bell.
+
+Lucy jumped up, saying, "Oh, yes! I will go and boil some exactly
+the time you like. Pray let me go, Mr. Harley."
+
+Adrian restrained her departure with a motion of his hand. "No," he
+said, "I will be ruled by Richard's tastes, and heaven grant me his
+digestion!"
+
+Lucy threw a sad look at Richard, who stretched on a sofa, and left
+the burden of the entertainment entirely to her. The eggs were a
+melancholy beginning, but her ardour to please Adrian would not be
+damped, and she deeply admired his resignation. If she failed in
+pleasing this glorious herald of peace, no matter by what small
+misadventure, she apprehended calamity; so there sat this fair dove
+with brows at work above her serious smiling blue eyes, covertly
+studying every aspect of the plump-faced epicure, that she might
+learn to propitiate him. "He shall not think me timid and stupid,"
+thought this brave girl, and indeed Adrian was astonished to find
+that she could both chat and be useful, as well as look ornamental.
+When he had finished one egg, behold, two fresh ones came in, boiled
+according to his prescription. She had quietly given her orders to
+the maid, and he had them without fuss. Possibly his look of dismay
+at the offending eggs had not been altogether involuntary, and her
+woman's instinct, inexperienced as she was, may have told her that
+he had come prepared to be not very well satisfied with anything in
+Love's cottage. There was mental faculty in those pliable brows to
+see through, and combat, an unwitting wise youth.
+
+How much she had achieved already she partly divined when Adrian
+said: "I think now I'm in case to answer your questions, my dear
+boy--thanks to Mrs. Richard," and he bowed to her his first direct
+acknowledgment of her position. Lucy thrilled with pleasure.
+
+"Ah!" cried Richard, and settled easily on his back.
+
+"To begin, the Pilgrim has lost his Note-book, and has been
+persuaded to offer a reward which shall maintain the happy finder
+thereof in an asylum for life. Benson--superlative Benson--has
+turned his shoulders upon Raynham. None know whither he has
+departed. It is believed that the sole surviving member of the sect
+of the Shaddock-Dogmatists is under a total eclipse of Woman."
+
+"Benson gone?" Richard exclaimed. "What a tremendous time it seems
+since I left Raynham!"
+
+"So it is, my dear boy. The honeymoon is Mahomet's minute; or say,
+the Persian King's water-pail that you read of in the story: You dip
+your head in it, and when you draw it out, you discover that you
+have lived a life. To resume: your uncle Algernon still roams in
+pursuit of the lost one--I should say, hops. Your uncle Hippias has
+a new and most perplexing symptom: a determination of bride-cake to
+the nose. Ever since your generous present to him, though he
+declares he never consumed a morsel of it, he has been under the
+distressing illusion that his nose is enormous, and I assure you he
+exhibits quite a maidenly timidity in following it--through a
+doorway, for instance. He complains of its terrible weight. I have
+conceived that Benson invisible might be sitting on it. His hand,
+and the doctor's, are in hourly consultation with it, but I fear it
+will not grow smaller. The Pilgrim has begotten upon it a new
+Aphorism: that Size is a matter of opinion."
+
+"Poor uncle Hippy!" said Richard, "I wonder he doesn't believe in
+magic. There's nothing supernatural to rival the wonderful
+sensations he does believe in. Good God! fancy coming to that!"
+
+"I'm sure I'm very sorry," Lucy protested, "but I can't help
+laughing."
+
+Charming to the wise youth her pretty laughter sounded.
+
+"The Pilgrim has your notion, Richard. Whom does he not forestall?
+'Confirmed dyspepsia is the apparatus of illusions,' and he accuses
+the Ages that put faith in sorcery, of universal indigestion, which
+may have been the case, owing to their infamous cookery. He says
+again, if you remember, that our own Age is travelling back to
+darkness and ignorance through dyspepsia. He lays the seat of wisdom
+in the centre of our system, Mrs. Richard: for which reason you will
+understand how sensible I am of the vast obligation I am under to
+you at the present moment, for your especial care of mine."
+
+Richard looked on at Lucy's little triumph, attributing Adrian's
+subjugation to her beauty and sweetness. She had latterly received a
+great many compliments on that score, which she did not care to
+hear, and Adrian's homage to a practical quality was far pleasanter
+to the young wife, who shrewdly guessed that her beauty would not
+help her much in the struggle she had now to maintain. Adrian
+continuing to lecture on the excelling virtues of wise cookery, a
+thought struck her: Where, where had she tossed Mrs. Berry's book?
+
+"So that's all about the home-people?" said Richard.
+
+"All!" replied Adrian. "Or stay: you know Clare's going to be
+married? Not? Your Aunt Helen"----
+
+"Oh, bother my Aunt Helen! What do you think she had the
+impertinence to write--but never mind! Is it to Ralph?"
+
+"Your Aunt Helen, I was going to say, my dear boy, is an
+extraordinary woman. It was from her originally that the Pilgrim
+first learnt to call the female the practical animal. He studies us
+all, you know. THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP is the abstract portraiture of
+his surrounding relatives. Well, your Aunt Helen"----
+
+"Mrs. Doria Battledoria!" laughed Richard.
+
+"----being foiled in a little pet scheme of her own--call it a
+System if you like--of some ten or fifteen years' standing, with
+regard to Miss Clare!"----
+
+"The fair Shuttlecockiana!"
+
+"----instead of fretting like a man, and questioning Providence, and
+turning herself and everybody else inside out, and seeing the world
+upside down, what does the practical animal do? She wanted to marry
+her to somebody she couldn't marry her to, so she resolved instantly
+to marry her to somebody she could marry her to: and as old
+gentlemen enter into these transactions with the practical animal
+the most readily, she fixed upon an old gentleman; an unmarried old
+gentleman, a rich old gentleman, and now a captive old gentleman.
+The ceremony takes place in about a week from the present time. No
+doubt you will receive your invitation in a day or two."
+
+"And that cold, icy, wretched Clare has consented to marry an old
+man!" groaned Richard. "I'll put a stop to that when I go to town."
+
+Richard got up and strode about the room. Then he bethought him it
+was time to go on board and make preparations.
+
+"I'm off," he said. "Adrian, you'll take her. She goes in the Empress,
+Mountfalcon's vessel. He starts us. A little schooner-yacht--such a
+beauty! I'll have one like her some day. Good-bye, darling!" he
+whispered to Lucy, and his hand and eyes lingered on her, and hers on
+him, seeking to make up for the priceless kiss they were debarred
+from. But she quickly looked away from him as he held her:--Adrian
+stood silent: his brows were up, and his mouth dubiously contracted.
+He spoke at last.
+
+"Go on the water?"
+
+"Yes. It's only to St. Helen's. Short and sharp."
+
+"Do you grudge me the nourishment my poor system has just received,
+my son?"
+
+"Oh, bother your system! Put on your hat, and come along. I'll put
+you on board in my boat."
+
+"Richard! I have already paid the penalty of them who are condemned
+to come to an island. I will go with you to the edge of the sea, and
+I will meet you there when you return, and take up the Tale of the
+Tritons: but, though I forfeit the pleasure of Mrs. Richard's
+company, I refuse to quit the land."
+
+"Yes, oh, Mr. Harley!" Lucy broke from her husband, "and I will stay
+with you, if you please. I don't want to go among those people, and
+we can see it all from the shore. Dearest! I don't want to go. You
+don't mind? Of course, I will go if you wish, but I would so much
+rather stay;" and she lengthened her plea in her attitude and look
+to melt the discontent she saw gathering.
+
+Adrian protested that she had much better go; that he could amuse
+himself very well till their return, and so forth; but she had
+schemes in her pretty head, and held to it to be allowed to stay in
+spite of Lord Mountfalcon's disappointment, cited by Richard, and at
+the great risk of vexing her darling, as she saw. Richard pished,
+and glanced contemptuously at Adrian. He gave way ungraciously.
+
+"There, do as you like. Get your things ready to leave this evening.
+No, I'm not angry."--Who could be? he seemed as he looked up from
+her modest fondling to ask Adrian, and seized the indemnity of a
+kiss on her forehead, which, however, did not immediately disperse
+the shade of annoyance he felt.
+
+"Good heavens!" he exclaimed. "Such a day as this, and a fellow
+refuses to come on the water! Well, come along to the edge of the
+sea." Adrian's angelic quality had quite worn off to him. He never
+thought of devoting himself to make the most of the material there
+was: but somebody else did, and that fair somebody succeeded
+wonderfully in a few short hours. She induced Adrian to reflect that
+the baronet had only to see her, and the family muddle would be
+smoothed at once. He came to it by degrees; still the gradations
+were rapid. Her manner he liked; she was certainly a nice picture:
+best of all, she was sensible. He forgot the farmer's niece in her,
+she was so very sensible. She appeared really to understand that it
+was a woman's duty to know how to cook.
+
+But the difficulty was, by what means the baronet could be brought
+to consent to see her. He had not yet consented to see his son, and
+Adrian, spurred by Lady Blandish, had ventured something in coming
+down. He was not inclined to venture more. The small debate in his
+mind ended by his throwing the burden on time. Time would bring the
+matter about. Christians as well as Pagans are in the habit of
+phrasing this excuse for folding their arms; "forgetful," says THE
+PILGRIM'S SCRIP, "that the devil's imps enter into no such
+armistice."
+
+As she loitered along the shore with her amusing companion, Lucy had
+many things to think of. There was her darling's match. The yachts
+were started by pistol-shot by Lord Mountfalcon on board the
+Empress, and her little heart beat after Richard's straining sails.
+Then there was the strangeness of walking with a relative of
+Richard's, one who had lived by his side so long. And the thought
+that perhaps this night she would have to appear before the dreaded
+father of her husband.
+
+"O Mr. Harley!" she said, "is it true--are we to go to-night? And
+me," she faltered, "will he see me?"
+
+"Ah! that is what I wanted to talk to you about," said Adrian. "I
+made some reply to our dear boy which he has slightly misinterpreted.
+Our second person plural is liable to misconstruction by an ardent
+mind. I said 'see you,' and he supposed--now, Mrs. Richard, I am
+sure you will understand me. Just at present perhaps it would be
+advisable--when the father and son have settled their accounts, the
+daughter-in-law can't be a debtor."...
+
+Lucy threw up her blue eyes. A half-cowardly delight at the chance
+of a respite from the awful interview made her quickly apprehensive.
+
+"O Mr. Harley! you think he should go alone first?"
+
+"Well, that is my notion. But the fact is, he is such an excellent
+husband that I fancy it will require more than a man's power of
+persuasion to get him to go."
+
+"But I will persuade him, Mr. Harley."
+
+"Perhaps, if you would...."
+
+"There is nothing I would not do for his happiness," murmured Lucy.
+
+The wise youth pressed her hand with lymphatic approbation. They
+walked on till the yachts had rounded the point.
+
+"Is it to-night, Mr. Harley?" she asked with some trouble in her
+voice now that her darling was out of sight.
+
+"I don't imagine your eloquence even will get him to leave you
+to-night," Adrian replied gallantly. "Besides, I must speak for
+myself. To achieve the passage to an island is enough for one day.
+No necessity exists for any hurry, except in the brain of that
+impetuous boy. You must correct it, Mrs. Richard. Men are made to be
+managed, and women are born managers. Now, if you were to let him
+know that you don't want to go to-night, and let him guess, after a
+day or two, that you would very much rather ... you might affect a
+peculiar repugnance. By taking it on yourself, you see, this wild
+young man will not require such frightful efforts of persuasion.
+Both his father and he are exceedingly delicate subjects, and his
+father unfortunately is not in a position to be managed directly.
+It's a strange office to propose to you, but it appears to devolve
+upon you to manage the father through the son. Prodigal having made
+his peace, you, who have done all the work from a distance,
+naturally come into the circle of the paternal smile, knowing it due
+to you. I see no other way. If Richard suspects that his father
+objects for the present to welcome his daughter-in-law, hostilities
+will be continued, the breach will be widened, bad will grow to
+worse, and I see no end to it."
+
+Adrian looked in her face, as much as to say: Now are you capable of
+this piece of heroism? And it did seem hard to her that she should
+have to tell Richard she shrank from any trial. But the proposition
+chimed in with her fears and her wishes: she thought the wise youth
+very wise: the poor child was not insensible to his flattery, and
+the subtler flattery of making herself in some measure a sacrifice
+to the home she had disturbed. She agreed to simulate as Adrian had
+suggested.
+
+Victory is the commonest heritage of the hero, and when Richard came
+on shore proclaiming that the Blandish had beaten the Begum by seven
+minutes and three-quarters, he was hastily kissed and congratulated
+by his bride with her fingers among the leaves of Dr. Kitchener, and
+anxiously questioned about wine.
+
+"Dearest! Mr. Harley wants to stay with us a little, and he thinks
+we ought not to go immediately--that is, before he has had some
+letters, and I feel ... I would so much rather...."
+
+"Ah! that's it, you coward!" said Richard. "Well, then, to-morrow.
+We had a splendid race. Did you see us?"
+
+"Oh, yes! I saw you and was sure my darling would win." And again
+she threw on him the cold water of that solicitude about wine. "Mr.
+Harley must have the best, you know, and we never drink it, and I'm
+so silly, I don't know good wine, and if you would send Tom where he
+can get _good_ wine. I have seen to the dinner."
+
+"So that's why you didn't come to meet me?"
+
+"Pardon me, darling."
+
+"Well, I do, but Mountfalcon doesn't, and Lady Judith thinks you
+ought to have been there."
+
+"Ah, but my heart was with you!"
+
+Richard put his hand to feel for the little heart: her eyelids
+softened, and she ran away.
+
+It is to say much of the dinner that Adrian found no fault with it,
+and was in perfect good humour at the conclusion of the service. He
+did not abuse the wine they were able to procure for him, which was
+also much. The coffee, too, had the honour of passing without
+comment. These were sound first steps toward the conquest of an
+epicure, and as yet Cupid did not grumble.
+
+After coffee they strolled out to see the sun set from Lady Judith's
+grounds. The wind had dropped. The clouds had rolled from the
+zenith, and ranged in amphitheatre with distant flushed bodies over
+sea and land: Titanic crimson head and chest rising from the wave
+faced Hyperion falling. There hung Briareus with deep-indented trunk
+and ravined brows, stretching all his hands up to unattainable blue
+summits. North-west the range had a rich white glow, as if shining
+to the moon, and westward, streams of amber, melting into upper
+rose, shot out from the dipping disk.
+
+"What Sandoe calls the passion-flower of heaven," said Richard under
+his breath to Adrian, who was serenely chanting Greek hexameters,
+and answered, in the swing of the caesura, "He might as well have
+said cauliflower."
+
+Lady Judith, with a black lace veil tied over her head, met them in
+the walk. She was tall and dark; dark-haired, dark-eyed, sweet and
+persuasive in her accent and manner. "A second edition of the
+Blandish," thinks Adrian. She welcomed him as one who had claims on
+her affability. She kissed Lucy protectingly, and remarking on the
+wonders of the evening, appropriated her husband. Adrian and Lucy
+found themselves walking behind them.
+
+The sun was under. All the spaces of the sky were alight, and
+Richard's fancy flamed.
+
+"So you're not intoxicated with your immense triumph this morning?"
+said Lady Judith.
+
+"Don't laugh at me. When it's over I feel ashamed of the trouble
+I've taken. Look at that glory!--I'm sure you despise me for it."
+
+"Was I not there to applaud you? I only think such energies should
+be turned into some definitely useful channel. But you must not go
+into the Army."
+
+"What else can I do?"
+
+"You are fit for so much that is better."
+
+"I never can be anything like Austin."
+
+"But I think you can do more."
+
+"Well, I thank you for thinking it, Lady Judith. Something I will
+do. A man must deserve to live, as you say."
+
+"Sauces," Adrian was heard to articulate distinctly in the rear,
+"Sauces are the top tree of this science. A woman who has mastered
+sauces sits on the apex of civilization."
+
+Briareus reddened duskily seaward. The West was all a burning rose.
+
+"How can men see such sights as those, and live idle?" Richard
+resumed. "I feel ashamed of asking my men to work for me.--Or I feel
+so now."
+
+"Not when you're racing the Begum, I think. There's no necessity for
+you to turn democrat like Austin. Do you write now?"
+
+"No. What is writing like mine? It doesn't deceive me. I know it's
+only the excuse I'm making to myself for remaining idle. I haven't
+written a line since--lately."
+
+"Because you are so happy."
+
+"No, not because of that. Of course I'm very happy...." He did not
+finish.
+
+Vague, shapeless ambition had replaced love in yonder skies. No
+Scientific Humanist was by to study the natural development, and
+guide him. This lady would hardly be deemed a very proper guide to
+the undirected energies of the youth, yet they had established
+relations of that nature. She was five years older than he, and a
+woman, which may explain her serene presumption.
+
+The cloud-giants had broken up: a brawny shoulder smouldered over
+the sea.
+
+"We'll work together in town, at all events," said Richard. "Why
+can't we go about together at night and find out people who want
+help?"
+
+Lady Judith smiled, and only corrected his nonsense by saying, "I
+think we mustn't be too romantic. You will become a knight-errant, I
+suppose. You have the characteristics of one."
+
+"Especially at breakfast," Adrian's unnecessarily emphatic
+gastronomical lessons to the young wife here came in.
+
+"You must be our champion," continued Lady Judith: "the rescuer and
+succourer of distressed dames and damsels. We want one badly."
+
+"You do," said Richard, earnestly: "from what I hear: from what I
+know!" His thoughts flew off with him as knight-errant hailed
+shrilly at exceeding critical moments by distressed dames and
+damsels. Images of airy towers hung around. His fancy performed
+miraculous feats. The towers crumbled. The stars grew larger, seemed
+to throb with lustre. His fancy crumbled with the towers of the
+air, his heart gave a leap, he turned to Lucy.
+
+"My darling! what have you been doing?" And as if to compensate her
+for his little knight-errant infidelity, he pressed very tenderly to
+her.
+
+"We have been engaged in a charming conversation on domestic
+cookery," interposed Adrian.
+
+"Cookery! such an evening as this?" His face was a handsome likeness
+of Hippias at the presentation of bride-cake.
+
+"Dearest! you know it's very useful," Lucy mirthfully pleaded.
+
+"Indeed I quite agree with you, child," said Lady Judith, "and I
+think you have the laugh of us. I certainly will learn to cook some
+day."
+
+"Woman's mission, in so many words," ejaculated Adrian.
+
+"And pray, what is man's?"
+
+"To taste thereof, and pronounce thereupon."
+
+"Let us give it up to them," said Lady Judith to Richard. "You and I
+never will make so delightful and beautifully balanced a world of
+it."
+
+Richard appeared to have grown perfectly willing to give everything
+up to the fair face, his bridal Hesper.
+
+Next day Lucy had to act the coward anew, and, as she did so, her
+heart sank to see how painfully it affected him that she should
+hesitate to go with him to his father. He was patient, gentle; he
+sat down by her side to appeal to her reason, and used all the
+arguments he could think of to persuade her.
+
+"If we go together and make him see us both: if he sees he has
+nothing to be ashamed of in you--rather everything to be proud of;
+if you are only near him, you will not have to speak a word, and I'm
+certain--as certain as that I live--that in a week we shall be
+settled happily at Raynham. I know my father so well, Lucy. Nobody
+knows him but I."
+
+Lucy asked whether Mr. Harley did not.
+
+"Adrian? Not a bit. Adrian only knows a part of people, Lucy; and
+not the best part."
+
+Lucy was disposed to think more highly of the object of her
+conquest.
+
+"Is it he that has been frightening you, Lucy?"
+
+"No, no, Richard; oh, dear no;" she cried, and looked at him more
+tenderly because she was not quite truthful.
+
+"He doesn't know my father at all," said Richard. But Lucy had
+another opinion of the wise youth, and secretly maintained it. She
+could not be won to imagine the baronet a man of human mould,
+generous, forgiving, full of passionate love at heart, as Richard
+tried to picture him, and thought him, now that he beheld him again
+through Adrian's embassy. To her he was that awful figure, shrouded
+by the midnight. "Why are you so harsh?" she had heard Richard cry
+more than once. She was sure that Adrian must be right.
+
+"Well, I tell you I won't go without you," said Richard, and Lucy
+begged for a little more time.
+
+Cupid now began to grumble, and with cause. Adrian positively
+refused to go on the water unless that element were smooth as a
+plate. The South-west still joked boisterously at any comparison of
+the sort; the days were magnificent; Richard had yachting
+engagements; and Lucy always petitioned to stay to keep Adrian
+company, conceiving it her duty as hostess. Arguing with Adrian was
+an absurd idea. If Richard hinted at his retaining Lucy, the wise
+youth would remark: "It's a wholesome interlude to your extremely
+Cupidinous behaviour, my dear boy."
+
+Richard asked his wife what they could possibly find to talk about.
+
+"All manner of things," said Lucy; "not only cookery. He is so
+amusing, though he does make fun of THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP, and I think
+he ought not. And then, do you know, darling--you won't think me
+vain?--I think he is beginning to like me a little."
+
+Richard laughed at the humble mind of his Beauty.
+
+"Doesn't everybody like you, admire you? Doesn't Lord Mountfalcon,
+and Mr. Morton, and Lady Judith?"
+
+"But he is one of your family, Richard."
+
+"And they all will, if she isn't a coward."
+
+"Ah, no!" she sighs, and is chidden.
+
+The conquest of an epicure, or any young wife's conquest beyond her
+husband, however loyally devised for their mutual happiness, may be
+costly to her. Richard in his hours of excitement was thrown very
+much with Lady Judith. He consulted her regarding what he termed
+Lucy's cowardice. Lady Judith said: "I think she's wrong, but you
+must learn to humour little women."
+
+"Then would you advise me to go up alone?" he asked, with a cloudy
+forehead.
+
+"What else can you do? Be reconciled yourself as quickly as you can.
+You can't drag her like a captive, you know?"
+
+It is not pleasant for a young husband, fancying his bride the
+peerless flower of Creation, to learn that he must humour a little
+woman in her. It was revolting to Richard.
+
+"What I fear," he said, "is, that my father will make it smooth with
+me, and not acknowledge her: so that whenever I go to him, I shall
+have to leave her, and tit for tat--an abominable existence, like a
+ball on a billiard-table. I won't bear that ignominy. And this I
+know, I know! she might prevent it at once, if she would only be
+brave, and face it. You, you, Lady Judith, you wouldn't be a
+coward?"
+
+"Where my old lord tells me to go, I go," the lady coldly replied.
+"There's not much merit in that. Pray, don't cite me. Women are born
+cowards, you know."
+
+"But I love the women who are not cowards."
+
+"The little thing--your wife has not refused to go?"
+
+"No--but tears! Who can stand tears?"
+
+Lucy had come to drop them. Unaccustomed to have his will thwarted,
+and urgent where he saw the thing to do so clearly, the young
+husband had spoken strong words: and she, who knew that she would
+have given her life by inches for him; who knew that she was playing
+a part for his happiness, and hiding for his sake the nature that
+was worthy his esteem; the poor little martyr had been weak a
+moment.
+
+She had Adrian's support. The wise youth was very comfortable. He
+liked the air of the Island, and he liked being petted. "A nice
+little woman! a very nice little woman!" Tom Bakewell heard him
+murmur to himself according to a habit he had; and his air of rather
+succulent patronage as he walked or sat beside the innocent Beauty,
+with his head thrown back and a smile that seemed always to be in
+secret communion with his marked abdominal prominence, showed that
+she was gaining part of what she played for. Wise youths who buy
+their loves, are not unwilling, when opportunity offers, to try and
+obtain the commodity for nothing. Examinations of her hand, as for
+some occult purpose, and unctuous pattings of the same, were not
+infrequent. Adrian waxed now and then Anacreontic in his
+compliments. Lucy would say: "That's worse than Lord Mountfalcon."
+
+"Better English than the noble lord deigns to employ--allow that?"
+quoth Adrian.
+
+"He is very kind," said Lucy.
+
+"To all save to our noble vernacular," added Adrian. "He seems to
+scent a rival to his dignity there."
+
+It may be that Adrian scented a rival to his lymphatic emotions.
+
+"We are at our ease here in excellent society," he wrote to Lady
+Blandish. "I am bound to confess that the Huron has a happy fortune,
+or a superlative instinct. Blindfold he has seized upon a suitable
+mate. She can look at a lord, and cook for an epicure. Besides Dr.
+Kitchener, she reads and comments on THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP. The 'Love'
+chapter, of course, takes her fancy. That picture of Woman, '_Drawn
+by Reverence and coloured by Love_,' she thinks beautiful, and
+repeats it, tossing up pretty eyes. Also the lover's petition:
+'_Give me purity to be worthy the good in her, and grant her
+patience to reach the good in me._' 'Tis quite taking to hear her
+lisp it. Be sure that I am repeating the petition! I make her read
+me her choice passages. She has not a bad voice.
+
+"The Lady Judith I spoke of is Austin's Miss Menteith, married to
+the incapable old Lord Felle, or Fellow, as the wits here call him.
+Lord Mountfalcon is his cousin, and her--what? She has been trying
+to find out, but they have both got over their perplexity, and act
+respectively the bad man reproved and the chaste counsellor; a
+position in which our young couple found them, and haply diverted
+its perils. They had quite taken them in hand. Lady Judith
+undertakes to cure the fair Papist of a pretty, modest trick of
+frowning and blushing when addressed, and his lordship directs the
+exuberant energies of the original man. 'Tis thus we fulfil our
+destinies, and are content. Sometimes they change pupils; my lord
+educates the little dame, and my lady the hope of Raynham. Joy and
+blessings unto all! as the German poet sings. Lady Judith accepted
+the hand of her decrepit lord that she might be of potent service to
+her fellow-creatures. Austin, you know, had great hopes of her.
+
+"I have for the first time in my career a field of lords to study. I
+think it is not without meaning that I am introduced to it by a
+yeoman's niece. The language of the two social extremes is similar.
+I find it to consist in an instinctively lavish use of vowels and
+adjectives. My lord and Farmer Blaize speak the same tongue, only my
+lord's has lost its backbone, and is limp, though fluent. Their
+pursuits are identical; but that one has money, or, as the Pilgrim
+terms it, _vantage_, and the other has not. Their ideas seem to have
+a special relationship in the peculiarity of stopping where they
+have begun. Young Tom Blaize with _vantage_ would be Lord
+Mountfalcon. Even in the character of their parasites I see a
+resemblance, though I am bound to confess that the Hon. Peter
+Brayder, who is my lord's parasite, is by no means noxious.
+
+"This sounds dreadfully democratic. Pray, don't be alarmed. The
+discovery of the affinity between the two extremes of the Royal
+British Oak has made me thrice conservative. I see now that the
+national love of a lord is less subservience than a form of
+self-love; putting a gold-lace hat on one's image, as it were, to
+bow to it. I see, too, the admirable wisdom of our system:--could
+there be a finer balance of power than in a community where men
+intellectually nil, have lawful vantage and a gold-lace hat on? How
+soothing it is to intellect--that noble rebel, as the PILGRIM has
+it--to stand, and bow, and know itself superior! This exquisite
+compensation maintains the balance: whereas that period anticipated
+by the PILGRIM, when science shall have produced an _intellectual
+aristocracy_, is indeed horrible to contemplate. For what despotism
+is so black as one the mind cannot challenge? 'Twill be an iron Age.
+Wherefore, madam, I cry, and shall continue to cry, '_Vive_ Lord
+Mountfalcon! long may he sip his Burgundy! long may the bacon-fed
+carry him on their shoulders!'
+
+"Mr. Morton (who does me the honour to call me Young Mephisto, and
+Socrates missed) leaves to-morrow to get Master Ralph out of a
+scrape. Our Richard has just been elected member of a Club for the
+promotion of nausea. Is he happy? you ask. As much so as one who has
+had the misfortune to obtain what he wanted can be. Speed is his
+passion. He races from point to point. In emulation of Leander and
+Don Juan, he swam, I hear, to the opposite shores the other day, or
+some world-shaking feat of the sort: himself the Hero whom he went
+to meet: or, as they who pun say, his Hero was a Bet. A pretty
+little domestic episode occurred this morning. He finds her
+abstracted in the fire of his caresses: she turns shy and seeks
+solitude: green jealousy takes hold of him: he lies in wait, and
+discovers her with his new rival--a veteran edition of the culinary
+Doctor! Blind to the Doctor's great national services, deaf to her
+wild music, he grasps the intruder, dismembers him, and performs
+upon him the treatment he has recommended for dressed cucumber.
+Tears and shrieks accompany the descent of the gastronome. Down she
+rushes to secure the cherished fragments: he follows: they find him,
+true to his character, alighted and straggling over a bed of
+blooming flowers. Yet ere a fairer flower can gather him, a heel
+black as Pluto stamps him into earth, flowers and all:--happy
+burial! Pathetic tribute to his merit is watering his grave, when by
+saunters my Lord Mountfalcon. 'What's the mattah?' says his
+lordship, soothing his moustache. They break apart, and 'tis left to
+me to explain from the window. My lord looks shocked, Richard is
+angry with her for having to be ashamed of himself, Beauty dries her
+eyes, and after a pause of general foolishness, the business of life
+is resumed. I may add that the Doctor has just been dug up, and we
+are busy, in the enemy's absence, renewing old AEson with enchanted
+threads. By the way, a Papist priest has blest them."
+
+A month had passed when Adrian wrote this letter. He was very
+comfortable; so of course he thought Time was doing his duty. Not a
+word did he say of Richard's return, and for some reason or other
+neither Richard nor Lucy spoke of it now.
+
+Lady Blandish wrote back: "His father thinks he has refused to come
+to him. By your utter silence on the subject, I fear that it must
+be so. Make him come. Bring him by force. _Insist_ on his coming. Is
+he mad? He must come _at once_."
+
+To this Adrian replied, after a contemplative comfortable lapse of a
+day or two, which might be laid to his efforts to adopt the lady's
+advice, "The point is that the half man declines to come without the
+whole man. The terrible question of sex is our obstruction."
+
+Lady Blandish was in despair. She had no positive assurance that the
+baronet would see his son; the mask put them all in the dark; but
+she thought she saw in Sir Austin irritation that the offender, at
+least when the opening to come and make his peace seemed to be
+before him, should let days and weeks go by. She saw through the
+mask sufficiently not to have any hope of his consenting to receive
+the couple at present; she was sure that his equanimity was
+fictitious; but she pierced no farther, or she might have started
+and asked herself, Is this the heart of a woman?
+
+The lady at last wrote to Richard. She said: "Come instantly, and
+come alone." Then Richard, against his judgment, gave way. "My
+father is not the man I thought him!" he exclaimed sadly, and Lucy
+felt his eyes saying to her: "And you, too, are not the woman I
+thought you." Nothing could the poor little heart reply but strain
+to his bosom and sleeplessly pray in his arms all the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+CLARE'S MARRIAGE
+
+
+Three weeks after Richard arrived in town, his cousin Clare was
+married, under the blessings of her energetic mother, and with the
+approbation of her kinsfolk, to the husband that had been
+expeditiously chosen for her. The gentleman, though something more
+than twice the age of his bride, had no idea of approaching senility
+for many long connubial years to come. Backed by his tailor and his
+hairdresser, he presented no such bad figure at the altar, and none
+would have thought that he was an ancient admirer of his bride's
+mama, as certainly none knew he had lately proposed for Mrs. Doria
+before there was any question of her daughter. These things were
+secrets; and the elastic and happy appearance of Mr. John Todhunter
+did not betray them at the altar. Perhaps he would rather have
+married the mother. He was a man of property, well born, tolerably
+well educated, and had, when Mrs. Doria rejected him for the first
+time, the reputation of being a fool--which a wealthy man may have
+in his youth; but as he lived on, and did not squander his
+money--amassed it, on the contrary, and did not seek to go into
+Parliament, and did other negative wise things, the world's opinion,
+as usual, veered completely round, and John Todhunter was esteemed a
+shrewd, sensible man--only not brilliant; that he was brilliant
+could not be said of him. In fact, the man could hardly talk, and it
+was a fortunate provision that no impromptu deliveries were required
+of him in the marriage-service.
+
+Mrs. Doria had her own reasons for being in a hurry. She had
+discovered something of the strange impassive nature of her child;
+not from any confession of Clare's, but from signs a mother can read
+when her eyes are not resolutely shut. She saw with alarm and
+anguish that Clare had fallen into the pit she had been digging for
+her so laboriously. In vain she entreated the baronet to break the
+disgraceful, and, as she said, illegal alliance his son had
+contracted. Sir Austin would not even stop the little pension to
+poor Berry. "At least you will do that, Austin," she begged
+pathetically. "You will show your sense of that horrid woman's
+conduct?" He refused to offer up any victim to console her. Then
+Mrs. Doria told him her thoughts,--and when an outraged energetic
+lady is finally brought to exhibit these painfully hoarded
+treasures, she does not use half words as a medium. His System, and
+his conduct generally were denounced to him, without analysis. She
+let him understand that the world laughed at him; and he heard this
+from her at a time when his mask was still soft and liable to be
+acted on by his nerves. "You are weak, Austin! weak, I tell you!"
+she said, and, like all angry and self-interested people, prophecy
+came easy to her. In her heart she accused him of her own fault, in
+imputing to him the wreck of her project. The baronet allowed her
+to revel in the proclamation of a dire future, and quietly
+counselled her to keep apart from him, which his sister assured him
+she would do.
+
+But to be passive in calamity is the province of no woman. Mark the
+race at any hour. "What revolution and hubbub does not that little
+instrument, the needle, avert from us!" says THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP.
+Alas, that in calamity women cannot stitch! Now that she saw Clare
+wanted other than iron, it struck her she must have a husband, and
+be made secure as a woman and a wife. This seemed the thing to do:
+and, as she had forced the iron down Clare's throat, so she forced
+the husband, and Clare gulped at the latter as she had at the
+former. On the very day that Mrs. Doria had this new track shaped
+out before her, John Todhunter called at the Foreys'. "Old John!"
+sang out Mrs. Doria, "show him up to me. I want to see him
+particularly." He sat with her alone. He was a man multitudes of
+women would have married--whom will they not?--and who would have
+married any presentable woman: but women do want asking, and John
+never had the word. The rape of such men is left to the practical
+animal. So John sat alone with his old flame. He had become resigned
+to her perpetual lamentation and living Suttee for his defunct
+rival. But, ha! what meant those soft glances now--addressed to him?
+His tailor and his hairdresser gave youth to John, but they had not
+the art to bestow upon him distinction, and an undistinguished man
+what woman looks at? John was an indistinguishable man. For that
+reason he was dry wood to a soft glance.
+
+And now she said: "It is time you should marry; and you are the man
+to be the guide and helper of a young woman, John. You are well
+preserved--younger than most of the young men of our day. You are
+eminently domestic, a good son, and will be a good husband and good
+father. Some one you must marry.--What do you think of Clare for a
+wife for you?"
+
+At first John Todhunter thought it would be very much like his
+marrying a baby. However, he listened to it, and that was enough for
+Mrs. Doria.
+
+She went down to John's mother, and consulted with her on the
+propriety of the scheme of wedding her daughter to John in
+accordance with his proposition. Mrs. Todhunter's jealousy of any
+disturbing force in the influence she held over her son Mrs. Doria
+knew to be one of the causes of John's remaining constant to the
+impression she had aforetime produced on him. She spoke so kindly of
+John, and laid so much stress on the ingrained obedience and passive
+disposition of her daughter, that Mrs. Todhunter was led to admit
+she did think it almost time John should be seeking a mate, and that
+he--all things considered--would hardly find a fitter one. And this,
+John Todhunter--old John no more--heard to his amazement when, a day
+or two subsequently, he instanced the probable disapproval of his
+mother.
+
+The match was arranged. Mrs. Doria did the wooing. It consisted in
+telling Clare that she had come to years when marriage was
+desirable, and that she had fallen into habits of moping which might
+have the worse effect on her future life, as it had on her present
+health and appearance, and which a husband would cure. Richard was
+told by Mrs. Doria that Clare had instantaneously consented to
+accept Mr. John Todhunter as lord of her days, and with more than
+obedience--with alacrity. At all events, when Richard spoke to
+Clare, the strange passive creature did not admit constraint on her
+inclinations. Mrs. Doria allowed Richard to speak to her. She
+laughed at his futile endeavours to undo her work, and the boyish
+sentiments he uttered on the subject. "Let us see, child," she said,
+"let us see which turns out the best; a marriage of passion, or a
+marriage of common sense."
+
+Heroic efforts were not wanting to arrest the union. Richard made
+repeated journeys to Hounslow, where Ralph was quartered, and if
+Ralph could have been persuaded to carry off a young lady who did
+not love him, from the bridegroom her mother averred she did love,
+Mrs. Doria might have been defeated. But Ralph in his cavalry
+quarters was cooler than Ralph in the Bursley meadows. "Women are
+oddities, Dick," he remarked, running a finger right and left along
+his upper lip. "Best leave them to their own freaks. She's a dear
+girl, though she doesn't talk: I like her for that. If she cared for
+me I'd go the race. She never did. It's no use asking a girl twice.
+_She_ knows whether she cares a fig for a fellow."
+
+The hero quitted him with some contempt. As Ralph Morton was a young
+man, and he had determined that John Todhunter was an old man, he
+sought another private interview with Clare, and getting her alone,
+said: "Clare, I've come to you for the last time. Will you marry
+Ralph Morton?"
+
+To which Clare replied, "I cannot marry two husbands, Richard."
+
+"Will you refuse to marry this old man?"
+
+"I must do as mama wishes."
+
+"Then you're going to marry an old man--a man you don't love, and
+can't love! Oh, good God! do you know what you're doing?" He flung
+about in a fury. "Do you know what it is? Clare!" he caught her two
+hands violently, "have you any idea of the horror you're going to
+commit?"
+
+She shrank a little at his vehemence, but neither blushed nor
+stammered: answering: "I see nothing wrong in doing what mama thinks
+right, Richard."
+
+"Your mother! I tell you it's an infamy, Clare! It's a miserable
+sin! I tell you, if I had done such a thing I would not live an hour
+after it. And coldly to prepare for it! to be busy about your
+dresses! They told me when I came in that you were with the
+milliner. To be smiling over the horrible outrage! decorating
+yourself!"...
+
+"Dear Richard," said Clare, "you will make me very unhappy."
+
+"That one of my blood should be so debased!" he cried, brushing
+angrily at his face. "Unhappy! I beg you to feel for yourself,
+Clare. But I suppose," and he said it scornfully, "girls don't feel
+this sort of shame."
+
+She grew a trifle paler.
+
+"Next to mama, I would wish to please you, dear Richard."
+
+"Have you no will of your own?" he exclaimed.
+
+She looked at him softly; a look he interpreted for the meekness he
+detested in her.
+
+"No, I believe you have none!" he added. "And what can I do? I can't
+step forward and stop this accursed marriage. If you would but say a
+word I would save you; but you tie my hands. And they expect me to
+stand by and see it done!"
+
+"Will you not be there, Richard?" said Clare, following the question
+with her soft eyes. It was the same voice that had so thrilled him
+on his marriage morn.
+
+"Oh, my darling Clare!" he cried in the kindest way he had ever used
+to her, "if you knew how I feel this!" and now as he wept she wept,
+and came insensibly into his arms. "My darling Clare!" he repeated.
+
+She said nothing, but seemed to shudder, weeping.
+
+"You _will_ do it, Clare? You will be sacrificed? So lovely as you
+are, too!... Clare! you cannot be quite blind. If I dared speak to
+you, and tell you all.... Look up. Can you still consent?"
+
+"I must not disobey mama," Clare murmured, without looking up from
+the nest her cheek had made on his bosom.
+
+"Then kiss me for the last time," said Richard. "I'll never kiss you
+after it, Clare."
+
+He bent his head to meet her mouth, and she threw her arms wildly
+round him, and kissed him convulsively, and clung to his lips,
+shutting her eyes, her face suffused with a burning red.
+
+Then he left her, unaware of the meaning of those passionate kisses.
+
+Argument with Mrs. Doria was like firing paper-pellets against a
+stone wall. To her indeed the young married hero spoke almost
+indecorously, and that which his delicacy withheld him from speaking
+to Clare. He could provoke nothing more responsive from the
+practical animal than "Pooh-pooh! Tush, tush! and Fiddlededee!"
+
+"Really," Mrs. Doria said to her intimates, "that boy's education
+acts like a disease on him. He cannot regard anything sensibly. He
+is for ever in some mad excess of his fancy, and what he will come
+to at last heaven only knows! I sincerely pray that Austin will be
+able to bear it."
+
+Threats of prayer, however, that harp upon their sincerity, are not
+very well worth having. Mrs. Doria had embarked in a practical
+controversy, as it were, with her brother. Doubtless she did trust
+he would be able to bear his sorrows to come, but one who has
+uttered prophecy can barely help hoping to see it fulfilled: she had
+prophesied much grief to the baronet.
+
+Poor John Todhunter, who would rather have married the mother, and
+had none of your heroic notions about the sacred necessity for love
+in marriage, moved as one guiltless of offence, and deserving his
+happiness. Mrs. Doria shielded him from the hero. To see him smile
+at Clare's obedient figure, and try not to look paternal, was
+touching.
+
+Meantime Clare's marriage served one purpose. It completely occupied
+Richard's mind, and prevented him from chafing at the vexation of
+not finding his father ready to meet him when he came to town. A
+letter had awaited Adrian at the hotel, which said, "Detain him till
+you hear further from me. Take him about with you into every form of
+society." No more than that. Adrian had to extemporize, that the
+baronet had gone down to Wales on pressing business, and would be
+back in a week or so. For ulterior inventions and devices wherewith
+to keep the young gentleman in town, he applied to Mrs. Doria.
+"Leave him to me," said Mrs. Doria, "I'll manage him." And she did.
+
+"Who can say," asks THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP, "when he is not walking a
+puppet to some woman?"
+
+Mrs. Doria would hear no good of Lucy. "I believe," she observed, as
+Adrian ventured a shrugging protest in her behalf,--"it is my firm
+opinion, that a scullery-maid would turn any of you men round her
+little finger--only give her time and opportunity." By dwelling on
+the arts of women, she reconciled it to her conscience to do her
+best to divide the young husband from his wife till it pleased his
+father they should live their unhallowed union again. Without
+compunction, or a sense of incongruity, she abused her brother and
+assisted the fulfilment of his behests.
+
+So the puppets were marshalled by Mrs. Doria, happy, or sad, or
+indifferent. Quite against his set resolve and the tide of his
+feelings, Richard found himself standing behind Clare in the
+church--the very edifice that had witnessed his own marriage, and
+heard, "I, Clare Doria, take thee John Pemberton," clearly
+pronounced. He stood, with black brows dissecting the arts of the
+tailor and hairdresser on unconscious John. The back, and much of
+the middle, of Mr. Todhunter's head was bald; the back shone like
+an egg-shell, but across the middle the artist had drawn two long
+dabs of hair from the sides, and plastered them cunningly, so that
+all save wilful eyes would have acknowledged the head to be covered.
+The man's only pretension was to a respectable juvenility. He had a
+good chest, stout limbs, a face inclined to be jolly. Mrs. Doria had
+no cause to be put out of countenance at all by the exterior of her
+son-in-law: nor was she. Her splendid hair and gratified smile made
+a light in the church. Playing puppets must be an immense pleasure
+to the practical animal. The Forey bridesmaids, five in number, and
+one Miss Doria, their cousin, stood as girls do stand at these
+sacrifices, whether happy, sad, or indifferent; a smile on their
+lips and tears in attendance. Old Mrs. Todhunter, an exceedingly
+small ancient woman, was also there. "I can't have my boy John
+married without seeing it done," she said, and throughout the
+ceremony she was muttering audible encomiums on her John's manly
+behaviour.
+
+The ring was affixed to Clare's finger; there was no ring lost in
+this common-sense marriage. The instant the clergyman bade him
+employ it, John drew the ring out, and dropped it on the finger of
+the cold passive hand in a business-like way, as one who had studied
+the matter. Mrs. Doria glanced aside at Richard. Richard observed
+Clare spread out her fingers that the operation might be the more
+easily effected.
+
+He did duty in the vestry a few minutes, and then said to his aunt:
+
+"Now I'll go."
+
+"You'll come to the breakfast, child? The Foreys"----
+
+He cut her short. "I've stood for the family, and I'll do no more. I
+won't pretend to eat and make merry over it."
+
+"Richard!"
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+She had attained her object and she wisely gave way.
+
+"Well. Go and kiss Clare, and shake his hand. Pray, pray be civil."
+
+She turned to Adrian, and said: "He is going. You must go with him,
+and find some means of keeping him, or he'll be running off to that
+woman. Now, no words--go!"
+
+Richard bade Clare farewell. She put up her mouth to him humbly, but
+he kissed her on the forehead.
+
+"Do not cease to love me," she said in a quavering whisper in his
+ear.
+
+Mr. Todhunter stood beaming and endangering the art of the
+hairdresser with his pocket-handkerchief. Now he positively was
+married, he thought he would rather have the daughter than the
+mother, which is a reverse of the order of human thankfulness at a
+gift of the Gods.
+
+"Richard, my boy!" he said heartily, "congratulate me."
+
+"I should be happy to, if I could," sedately replied the hero, to
+the consternation of those around. Nodding to the bridesmaids and
+bowing to the old lady, he passed out.
+
+Adrian, who had been behind him, deputed to watch for a possible
+unpleasantness, just hinted to John: "You know, poor fellow, he has
+got into a mess with his marriage."
+
+"Oh! ah! yes!" kindly said John, "poor fellow!"
+
+All the puppets then rolled off to the breakfast.
+
+Adrian hurried after Richard in an extremely discontented state of
+mind. Not to be at the breakfast and see the best of the fun,
+disgusted him. However, he remembered that he was a philosopher, and
+the strong disgust he felt was only expressed in concentrated
+cynicism on every earthly matter engendered by the conversation.
+They walked side by side into Kensington Gardens. The hero was
+mouthing away to himself, talking by fits.
+
+Presently he faced Adrian, crying: "And I might have stopped it! I
+see it now! I might have stopped it by going straight to him, and
+asking him if he dared marry a girl who did not love him. And I
+never thought of it. Good heavens! I feel this miserable affair on
+my conscience."
+
+"Ah!" groaned Adrian. "An unpleasant cargo for the conscience, that!
+I would rather carry anything on mine than a married couple. Do you
+purpose going to him now?"
+
+The hero soliloquized: "He's not a bad sort of man."...
+
+"Well, he's not a Cavalier," said Adrian, "and that's why you wonder
+your aunt selected him, no doubt? He's decidedly of the Roundhead
+type, with the Puritan extracted, or inoffensive, if latent."
+
+"There's the double infamy!" cried Richard, "that a man you can't
+call bad, should do this damned thing!"
+
+"Well, it's hard we can't find a villain."
+
+"He would have listened to me, I'm sure."
+
+"Go to him now, Richard, my son. Go to him now. It's not yet too late.
+Who knows? If he really has a noble elevated superior mind--though not a
+Cavalier in person, he may be one at heart--he might, to please you, and
+since you put such stress upon it, abstain ... perhaps with some loss of
+dignity, but never mind. And the request might be singular, or seem so,
+but everything has happened before in this world, you know, my dear boy.
+And what an infinite consolation it is for the eccentric, that
+reflection!"
+
+The hero was impervious to the wise youth. He stared at him as if he
+were but a speck in the universe he visioned.
+
+It was provoking that Richard should be Adrian's best subject for
+cynical pastime, in the extraordinary heterodoxies he started, and
+his worst in the way he took it; and the wise youth, against his
+will, had to feel as conscious of the young man's imaginative mental
+armour, as he was of his muscular physical.
+
+"The same sort of day!" mused Richard, looking up. "I suppose my
+father's right. We make our own fates, and nature has nothing to do
+with it."
+
+Adrian yawned.
+
+"Some difference in the trees, though," Richard continued
+abstractedly.
+
+"Growing bald at the top," said Adrian.
+
+"Will you believe that my aunt Helen compared the conduct of that
+wretched slave Clare to Lucy's, who, she had the cruel insolence to
+say, entangled me into marriage?" the hero broke out loudly and
+rapidly. "You know--I told you, Adrian--how I had to threaten and
+insist, and how she pleaded, and implored me to wait."
+
+"Ah! hum!" mumbled Adrian.
+
+"You remember my telling you?" Richard was earnest to hear her
+exonerated.
+
+"Pleaded and implored, my dear boy? Oh, no doubt she did. Where's
+the lass that doesn't."
+
+"Call my wife by another name, if you please."
+
+"The generic title can't be cancelled because of your having married
+one of the body, my son."
+
+"She did all she could to persuade me to wait!" emphasized Richard.
+
+Adrian shook his head with a deplorable smile.
+
+"Come, come, my good Ricky; not all! not all!"
+
+Richard bellowed: "What more could she have done?"
+
+"She could have shaved her head, for instance."
+
+This happy shaft did stick. With a furious exclamation Richard shot
+in front, Adrian following him; and asking him (merely to have his
+assumption verified), whether he did not think she might have shaved
+her head? and, presuming her to have done so, whether, in candour,
+he did not think he would have waited--at least till she looked less
+of a rank lunatic?
+
+After a minute or so, the wise youth was but a fly buzzing about
+Richard's head. Three weeks of separation from Lucy, and an
+excitement deceased, caused him to have soft yearnings for the dear
+lovely home-face. He told Adrian it was his intention to go down
+that night. Adrian immediately became serious. He was at a loss what
+to invent to detain him, beyond the stale fiction that his father
+was coming to-morrow. He rendered homage to the genius of woman in
+these straits. "My aunt," he thought, "would have the lie ready; and
+not only that, but she would take care it did its work."
+
+At this juncture the voice of a cavalier in the Row hailed them,
+proving to be the Honourable Peter Brayder, Lord Mountfalcon's
+parasite. He greeted them very cordially; and Richard, remembering
+some fun they had in the Island, asked him to dine with them;
+postponing his return till the next day. Lucy was his. It was even
+sweet to dally with the delight of seeing her.
+
+The Hon. Peter was one who did honour to the body he belonged to.
+Though not so tall as a West of London footman, he was as shapely;
+and he had a power of making his voice insinuating, or arrogant, as
+it suited the exigencies of his profession. He had not a rap of
+money in the world; yet he rode a horse, lived high, expended
+largely. The world said that the Hon. Peter was salaried by his
+Lordship, and that, in common with that of Parasite, he exercised
+the ancient companion profession. This the world said, and still
+smiled at the Hon. Peter; for he was an engaging fellow, and where
+he went not Lord Mountfalcon would not go.
+
+They had a quiet little hotel dinner, ordered by Adrian, and made a
+square at the table, Ripton Thompson being the fourth. Richard sent
+down to his office to fetch him, and the two friends shook hands for
+the first time since the great deed had been executed. Deep was the
+Old Dog's delight to hear the praises of his Beauty sounded by such
+aristocratic lips as the Hon. Peter Brayder's. All through the
+dinner he was throwing out hints and small queries to get a fuller
+account of her; and when the claret had circulated, he spoke a word
+or two himself, and heard the Hon. Peter eulogize his taste, and
+wish him a bride as beautiful; at which Ripton blushed, and said, he
+had no hope of that, and the Hon. Peter assured him marriage did not
+break the mould.
+
+After the wine this gentleman took his cigar on the balcony, and
+found occasion to get some conversation with Adrian alone.
+
+"Our young friend here--made it all right with the governor?" he
+asked carelessly.
+
+"Oh yes!" said Adrian. But it struck him that Brayder might be of
+assistance in showing Richard a little of the "society in every
+form," required by his chief's prescript. "That is," he continued,
+"we are not yet permitted an interview with the august author of our
+being, and I have rather a difficult post. 'Tis mine both to keep
+him here, and also to find him the opportunity to measure himself
+with his fellow-man. In other words, his father wants him to see
+something of life before he enters upon housekeeping. Now I am proud
+to confess that I'm hardly equal to the task. The demi, or
+damnedmonde--if it's that he wants him to observe--is one that I
+have not got the walk to."
+
+"Ha! ha!" laughed Brayder. "You do the keeping, I offer to parade
+the demi. I must say, though, it's a queer notion of the old
+gentleman."
+
+"It's the continuation of a philosophic plan," said Adrian.
+
+Brayder followed the curvings of the whiff of his cigar with his
+eyes, and ejaculated, "Infernally philosophic!"
+
+"Has Lord Mountfalcon left the island?" Adrian inquired.
+
+"Mount? to tell the truth I don't know where he is. Chasing some
+light craft, I suppose. That's poor Mount's weakness. It's his ruin,
+poor fellow! He's so confoundedly in earnest at the game."
+
+"He ought to know it by this time, if fame speaks true," remarked
+Adrian.
+
+"He's a baby about women, and always will be," said Brayder. "He's
+been once or twice wanting to marry them. Now there's a
+woman--you've heard of Mrs. Mount? All the world knows her.--If that
+woman hadn't scandalized."--The young man joined them, and checked
+the communication. Brayder winked to Adrian, and pitifully indicated
+the presence of an innocent.
+
+"A married man, you know," said Adrian.
+
+"Yes, yes!--we won't shock him," Brayder observed. He appeared to
+study the young man while they talked.
+
+Next morning Richard was surprised by a visit from his aunt. Mrs.
+Doria took a seat by his side, and spoke as follows:
+
+"My dear nephew. Now you know I have always loved you, and thought
+of your welfare as if you had been my own child. More than that, I
+fear. Well, now, you are thinking of returning to--to that
+place--are you not? Yes. It is as I thought. Very well now, let me
+speak to you. You are in a much more dangerous position than you
+imagine. I don't deny your father's affection for you. It would be
+absurd to deny it. But you are of an age now to appreciate his
+character. Whatever you may do he will always give you money. That
+you are sure of; that you know. Very well. But you are one to want
+more than money: you want his love. Richard, I am convinced you will
+never be happy, whatever base pleasures you may be led into, if he
+should withhold his love from you. Now, child, you know you have
+grievously offended him. I wish not to animadvert on your
+conduct.--You fancied yourself in love, and so on, and you were
+rash. The less said of it the better now. But you must now--it is
+your duty now to do something--to do everything that lies in your
+power to show him you repent. No interruptions! Listen to me. You
+must consider him. Austin is not like other men. Austin requires
+the most delicate management. You must--whether you feel it or
+no--present an appearance of contrition. I counsel it for the good
+of all. He is just like a woman, and where his feelings are offended
+he wants utter subservience. He has you in town, and he does not see
+you:--now you know that he and I are not in communication: we have
+likewise our differences:--Well, he has you in town, and he holds
+aloof:--he is trying you, my dear Richard. No: he is not at Raynham:
+I do not know where he is. He is trying you, child, and you must be
+patient. You must convince him that you do not care utterly for your
+own gratification. If this person--I wish to speak of her with
+respect, for your sake--well, if she loves you _at all_--if, I say,
+she loves you _one atom_, she will repeat my solicitations for you
+to stay and patiently wait here till he consents to see you. I tell
+you candidly, it's your only chance of ever getting him to receive
+_her_. That you should know. And now, Richard, I may add that there
+is something else you should know. You should know that it depends
+entirely upon your conduct now, whether you are to see your father's
+heart for ever divided from you, and a new family at Raynham. You do
+not understand? I will explain. Brothers and sisters are excellent
+things for young people, but a new brood of them can hardly be
+acceptable to a young man. In fact, they are, and must be, aliens. I
+only tell you what I have heard on good authority. Don't you
+understand now? Foolish boy! if you do not humour him, he will marry
+her. Oh! I am sure of it. I know it. And this you will drive him to.
+I do not warn you on the score of your prospects, but of your
+feelings. I should regard such a contingency, Richard, as a final
+division between you. Think of the scandal! but alas, that is the
+least of the evils."
+
+It was Mrs. Doria's object to produce an impression, and avoid an
+argument. She therefore left him as soon as she had, as she
+supposed, made her mark on the young man. Richard was very silent
+during the speech, and save for an exclamation or so, had listened
+attentively. He pondered on what his aunt said. He loved Lady
+Blandish, and yet he did not wish to see her Lady Feverel. Mrs.
+Doria laid painful stress on the scandal, and though he did not
+give his mind to this, he thought of it. He thought of his mother.
+Where was she? But most his thoughts recurred to his father, and
+something akin to jealousy slowly awakened his heart to him. He had
+given him up, and had not latterly felt extremely filial; but he
+could not bear the idea of a division in the love of which he had
+ever been the idol and sole object. And such a man, too! so good! so
+generous! If it was jealousy that roused the young man's heart to
+his father, the better part of love was also revived in it. He
+thought of old days: of his father's forbearance, his own
+wilfulness. He looked on himself, and what he had done, with the
+eyes of such a man. He determined to do all he could to regain his
+favour.
+
+Mrs. Doria learnt from Adrian in the evening that her nephew
+intended waiting in town another week.
+
+"That will do," smiled Mrs. Doria. "He will be more patient at the
+end of a week."
+
+"Oh! does patience beget patience?" said Adrian. "I was not aware it
+was a propagating virtue. I surrender him to you. I shan't be able
+to hold him in after one week more. I assure you, my dear aunt, he's
+already"....
+
+"Thank you, no explanation," Mrs. Doria begged.
+
+When Richard saw her next, he was informed that she had received a
+most satisfactory letter from Mrs. John Todhunter: quite a glowing
+account of John's behaviour: but on Richard's desiring to know the
+words Clare had written, Mrs. Doria objected to be explicit, and
+shot into worldly gossip.
+
+"Clare seldom glows," said Richard.
+
+"No, I mean _for her_," his aunt remarked. "Don't look like your
+father, child."
+
+"I should like to have seen the letter," said Richard.
+
+Mrs. Doria did not propose to show it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+A DINNER-PARTY AT RICHMOND
+
+
+A lady driving a pair of greys was noticed by Richard in his rides
+and walks. She passed him rather obviously and often. She was very
+handsome; a bold beauty, with shining black hair, red lips, and eyes
+not afraid of men. The hair was brushed from her temples, leaving
+one of those fine reckless outlines which the action of driving, and
+the pace, admirably set off. She took his fancy. He liked the air of
+petulant gallantry about her, and mused upon the picture, rare to
+him, of a glorious dashing woman. He thought, too, she looked at
+him. He was not at the time inclined to be vain, or he might have
+been sure she did. Once it struck him she nodded slightly.
+
+He asked Adrian one day in the park--who she was.
+
+"I don't know her," said Adrian. "Probably a superior priestess of
+Paphos."
+
+"Now that's my idea of Bellona," Richard exclaimed. "Not the fury
+they paint, but a spirited, dauntless, eager-looking creature like
+that."
+
+"Bellona?" returned the wise youth. "I don't think her hair was
+black. Red, wasn't it? I shouldn't compare her to Bellona; though,
+no doubt, she's as ready to spill blood. Look at her! She does seem
+to scent carnage. I see your idea. No; I should liken her to Diana
+emerged from the tutorship of Master Endymion, and at nice play
+among the gods. Depend upon it--they tell us nothing of the
+matter--Olympus shrouds the story--but you may be certain that when
+she left the pretty shepherd she had greater vogue than Venus up
+aloft."
+
+Brayder joined them.
+
+"See Mrs. Mount go by?" he said.
+
+"Oh, that's Mrs. Mount!" cried Adrian.
+
+"Who's Mrs. Mount?" Richard inquired.
+
+"A sister to Miss Random, my dear boy."
+
+"Like to know her?" drawled the Hon. Peter.
+
+Richard replied indifferently, "No," and Mrs. Mount passed out of
+sight and out of the conversation.
+
+The young man wrote submissive letters to his father. "I have
+remained here waiting to see you now five weeks," he wrote. "I have
+written to you three letters, and you do not reply to them. Let me
+tell you again how sincerely I desire and pray that you will come,
+or permit me to come to you and throw myself at your feet, and beg
+my forgiveness, and hers. She as earnestly implores it. Indeed, I am
+very wretched, sir. Believe me, there is nothing I would not do to
+regain your esteem and the love I fear I have unhappily forfeited. I
+will remain another week in the hope of hearing from you, or seeing
+you. I beg of you, sir, not to drive me mad. Whatever you ask of me
+I will consent to."
+
+"Nothing he would not do!" the baronet commented as he read. "There
+is nothing he would not do! He will remain another week and give me
+that final chance! And it is I who drive him mad! Already he is
+beginning to cast his retribution on my shoulders."
+
+Sir Austin had really gone down to Wales to be out of the way. A
+Shaddock-Dogmatist does not meet misfortune without hearing of it,
+and the author of THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP in trouble found London too
+hot for him. He quitted London to take refuge among the mountains;
+living there in solitary commune with a virgin Note-book.
+
+Some indefinite scheme was in his head in this treatment of his son.
+Had he construed it, it would have looked ugly; and it settled to a
+vague principle that the young man should be tried and tested.
+
+"Let him learn to deny himself something. Let him live with his
+equals for a term. If he loves me he will read my wishes." Thus he
+explained his principle to Lady Blandish.
+
+The lady wrote: "You speak of a term. Till when? May I name one to
+him? It is the dreadful _uncertainty_ that reduces him to despair.
+That, and nothing else. Pray be explicit."
+
+In return, he distantly indicated Richard's majority.
+
+How could Lady Blandish go and ask the young man to wait a year away
+from his wife? Her instinct began to open a wide eye on the idol she
+worshipped.
+
+When people do not themselves know what they mean, they succeed in
+deceiving and imposing upon others. Not only was Lady Blandish
+mystified; Mrs. Doria, who pierced into the recesses of everybody's
+mind, and had always been in the habit of reading off her brother
+from infancy, and had never known herself to be once wrong about
+him, she confessed she was quite at a loss to comprehend Austin's
+principle. "For principle he has," said Mrs. Doria; "he never acts
+without one. But what it is, I cannot at present perceive. If he
+would write, and command the boy to await his return, all would be
+clear. He allows us to go and fetch him, and then leaves us all in a
+quandary. It must be some woman's influence. That is the only way to
+account for it."
+
+"Singular!" interjected Adrian, "what pride women have in their sex!
+Well, I have to tell you, my dear aunt, that the day after to-morrow
+I hand my charge over to your keeping. I can't hold him in an hour
+longer. I've had to leash him with lies till my invention's
+exhausted. I petition to have them put down to the chief's account,
+but when the stream runs dry I can do no more. The last was, that I
+had heard from him desiring me to have the South-west bedroom ready
+for him on Tuesday proximate. 'So!' says my son, 'I'll wait till
+then,' and from the gigantic effort he exhibited in coming to it, I
+doubt any human power's getting him to wait longer."
+
+"We must, we must detain him," said Mrs. Doria. "If we do not, I am
+convinced Austin will do something rash that he will for ever
+repent. He will marry that woman, Adrian. Mark my words. Now with
+any other young man!... But Richard's education! that ridiculous
+System!... Has he no distraction? nothing to amuse him?"
+
+"Poor boy! I suppose he wants his own particular playfellow."
+
+The wise youth had to bow to a reproof.
+
+"I tell you, Adrian, he will marry that woman."
+
+"My dear aunt! Can a chaste man do aught more commendable?"
+
+"Has the boy no object we can induce him to follow?--If he had but a
+profession!"
+
+"What say you to the regeneration of the streets of London, and the
+profession of moral-scavenger, aunt? I assure you I have served a
+month's apprenticeship with him. We sally forth on the tenth hour
+of the night. A female passes. I hear him groan. 'Is _she_ one of
+them, Adrian?' I am compelled to admit she is not the saint he deems
+it the portion of every creature wearing petticoats to be. Another
+groan; an evident internal, 'It cannot be--and yet!' ... that we
+hear on the stage. Rollings of eyes: impious questionings of the
+Creator of the universe; savage mutterings against brutal males; and
+then we meet a second young person, and repeat the performance--of
+which I am rather tired. It would be all very well, but he turns
+upon me, and lectures me because I don't hire a house, and furnish
+it for all the women one meets to live in in purity. Now that's too
+much to ask of a quiet man. Master Thompson has latterly relieved
+me, I'm happy to say."
+
+Mrs. Doria thought her thoughts.
+
+"Has Austin written to you since you were in town?"
+
+"Not an Aphorism!" returned Adrian.
+
+"I must see Richard to-morrow morning," Mrs. Doria ended the
+colloquy by saying.
+
+The result of her interview with her nephew was, that Richard made
+no allusion to a departure on the Tuesday; and for many days
+afterward he appeared to have an absorbing business on his hands:
+but what it was Adrian did not then learn, and his admiration of
+Mrs. Doria's genius for management rose to a very high pitch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On a morning in October they had an early visitor in the person of
+the Hon. Peter, whom they had not seen for a week or more.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, flourishing his cane in his most affable
+manner, "I've come to propose to you to join us in a little
+dinner-party at Richmond. Nobody's in town, you know. London's as
+dead as a stock-fish. Nothing but the scrapings to offer you. But
+the weather's fine: I flatter myself you'll find the company
+agreeable. What says my friend Feverel?"
+
+Richard begged to be excused.
+
+"No, no: positively you must come," said the Hon. Peter. "I've had
+some trouble to get them together to relieve the dulness of your
+incarceration. Richmond's within the rules of your prison. You can
+be back by night. Moonlight on the water--lovely woman. We've
+engaged a city-barge to pull us back. Eight oars--I'm not sure it
+isn't sixteen. Come--the word!"
+
+Adrian was for going. Richard said he had an appointment with
+Ripton.
+
+"You're in for another rick, you two," said Adrian. "Arrange that we
+go. You haven't seen the cockney's Paradise. Abjure Blazes, and
+taste of peace, my son."
+
+After some persuasion, Richard yawned wearily, and got up, and threw
+aside the care that was on him, saying, "Very well. Just as you
+like. We'll take old Rip with us."
+
+Adrian consulted Brayder's eye at this. The Hon. Peter briskly
+declared he should be delighted to have Feverel's friend, and
+offered to take them all down in his drag.
+
+"If you don't get a match on to swim there with the tide--eh,
+Feverel, my boy?"
+
+Richard replied that he had given up that sort of thing, at which
+Brayder communicated a queer glance to Adrian, and applauded the
+youth.
+
+Richmond was under a still October sun. The pleasant landscape,
+bathed in Autumn, stretched from the foot of the hill to a red
+horizon haze. The day was like none that Richard vividly remembered.
+It touched no link in the chain of his recollection. It was quiet,
+and belonged to the spirit of the season.
+
+Adrian had divined the character of the scrapings they were to meet.
+Brayder introduced them to one or two of the men, hastily and in
+rather an undervoice, as a thing to get over. They made their bow to
+the first knot of ladies they encountered. Propriety was observed
+strictly, even to severity. The general talk was of the weather.
+Here and there a lady would seize a button-hole or any little bit of
+the habiliments, of the man she was addressing; and if it came to
+her to chide him, she did it with more than a forefinger. This,
+however, was only here and there, and a privilege of intimacy.
+
+Where ladies are gathered together, the Queen of the assemblage may
+be known by her Court of males. The Queen of the present gathering
+leaned against a corner of the open window, surrounded by a stalwart
+Court, in whom a practised eye would have discerned guardsmen, and
+Ripton, with a sinking of the heart, apprehended lords. They were
+fine men, offering inanimate homage. The trim of their whiskerage,
+the cut of their coats, the high-bred indolence in their aspect,
+eclipsed Ripton's sense of self-esteem. But they kindly looked over
+him. Occasionally one committed a momentary outrage on him with an
+eye-glass, seeming to cry out in a voice of scathing scorn, "Who's
+this?" and Ripton got closer to his hero to justify his humble
+pretensions to existence and an identity in the shadow of him.
+Richard gazed about. Heroes do not always know what to say or do;
+and the cold bath before dinner in strange company is one of the
+instances. He had recognized his superb Bellona in the lady by the
+garden window. For Brayder the men had nods and jokes, the ladies a
+pretty playfulness. He was very busy, passing between the groups,
+chatting, laughing, taking the feminine taps he received, and
+sometimes returning them in sly whispers. Adrian sat down and
+crossed his legs, looking amused and benignant.
+
+"Whose dinner is it?" Ripton heard a mignonne beauty ask of a
+cavalier.
+
+"Mount's, I suppose," was the answer.
+
+"Where is he? Why don't he come?"
+
+"An affaire, I fancy."
+
+"There he is again! How shamefully he treats Mrs. Mount!"
+
+"She don't seem to cry over it."
+
+Mrs. Mount was flashing her teeth and eyes with laughter at one of
+her Court, who appeared to be Fool.
+
+Dinner was announced. The ladies proclaimed extravagant appetites.
+Brayder posted his three friends. Ripton found himself under the lee
+of a dame with a bosom. On the other side of him was the mignonne.
+Adrian was at the lower end of the table. Ladies were in profusion,
+and he had his share. Brayder drew Richard from seat to seat. A
+happy man had established himself next to Mrs. Mount. Him Brayder
+hailed to take the head of the table. The happy man objected,
+Brayder continued urgent, the lady tenderly insisted, the happy man
+grimaced, dropped into the post of honour, strove to look placable.
+Richard usurped his chair, and was not badly welcomed by his
+neighbour.
+
+Then the dinner commenced, and had all the attention of the company,
+till the flying of the first champagne-cork gave the signal, and a
+hum began to spread. Sparkling wine, that looseneth the tongue, and
+displayeth the verity, hath also the quality of colouring it. The
+ladies laughed high; Richard only thought them gay and natural. They
+flung back in their chairs and laughed to tears; Ripton thought only
+of the pleasure he had in their society. The champagne-corks
+continued a regular file-firing.
+
+"Where have you been lately? I haven't seen you in the park," said
+Mrs. Mount to Richard.
+
+"No," he replied, "I've not been there." The question seemed odd:
+she spoke so simply that it did not impress him. He emptied his
+glass, and had it filled again.
+
+The Hon. Peter did most of the open talking, which related to
+horses, yachting, opera, and sport generally: who was ruined, by
+what horse, or by what woman. He told one or two of Richard's feats.
+Fair smiles rewarded the hero.
+
+"Do you bet?" said Mrs. Mount.
+
+"Only on myself," returned Richard.
+
+"Bravo!" cried his Bellona, and her eye sent a lingering delirious
+sparkle across her brimming glass at him.
+
+"I'm sure you're a safe one to back," she added, and seemed to scan
+his points approvingly.
+
+Richard's cheeks mounted bloom.
+
+"Don't you adore champagne?" quoth the dame with a bosom to Ripton.
+
+"Oh, yes!" answered Ripton, with more candour than accuracy, "I
+always drink it."
+
+"Do you indeed?" said the enraptured bosom, ogling him. "You would
+be a friend, now! I hope you don't object to a lady joining you now
+and then. Champagne's my folly."
+
+A laugh was circling among the ladies of whom Adrian was the centre;
+first low, and as he continued some narration, peals resounded, till
+those excluded from the fun demanded the cue, and ladies leaned
+behind gentlemen to take it up, and formed an electric chain of
+laughter. Each one, as her ear received it, caught up her
+handkerchief, and laughed, and looked shocked afterwards, or looked
+shocked and then spouted laughter. The anecdote might have been
+communicated to the bewildered cavaliers, but coming to a lady of a
+demurer cast, she looked shocked without laughing, and reproved the
+female table, in whose breasts it was consigned to burial: but here
+and there a man's head was seen bent, and a lady's mouth moved,
+though her face was not turned toward him, and a man's broad laugh
+was presently heard, while the lady gazed unconsciously before her,
+and preserved her gravity if she could escape any other lady's eyes;
+failing in which, handkerchiefs were simultaneously seized, and a
+second chime arose, till the tickling force subsided to a few chance
+bursts.
+
+What nonsense it is that my father writes about women! thought
+Richard. He says they can't laugh, and don't understand humour. It
+comes, he reflected, of his shutting himself from the world. And the
+idea that he was seeing the world, and feeling wiser, flattered him.
+He talked fluently to his dangerous Bellona. He gave her some
+reminiscences of Adrian's whimsies.
+
+"Oh!" said she, "that's your tutor, is it!" She eyed the young man
+as if she thought he must go far and fast.
+
+Ripton felt a push. "Look at that," said the bosom, fuming utter
+disgust. He was directed to see a manly arm round the waist of the
+mignonne. "Now that's what I don't like in company," the bosom
+inflated to observe with sufficient emphasis. "She always will allow
+it with everybody. Give her a nudge."
+
+Ripton protested that he dared not; upon which she said, "Then I
+will"; and inclined her sumptuous bust across his lap, breathing
+wine in his face, and gave the nudge. The mignonne turned an
+inquiring eye on Ripton; a mischievous spark shot from it. She
+laughed, and said: "Aren't you satisfied with the old bird?"
+
+"Impudence!" muttered the bosom, growing grander and redder.
+
+"Do, do fill her glass, and keep her quiet--she drinks port when
+there's no more champagne," said the mignonne.
+
+The bosom revenged herself by whispering to Ripton scandal of the
+mignonne, and between them he was enabled to form a correcter
+estimate of the company, and quite recovered from his original awe:
+so much so as to feel a touch of jealousy at seeing his lively
+little neighbour still held in absolute possession.
+
+Mrs. Mount did not come out much; but there was a deferential manner
+in the bearing of the men toward her, which those haughty creatures
+accord not save to clever women; and she contrived to hold the talk
+with three or four at the head of the table while she still had
+passages aside with Richard.
+
+The port and claret went very well after the champagne. The ladies
+here did not ignominiously surrender the field to the gentlemen;
+they maintained their position with honour. Silver was seen far out
+on Thames. The wine ebbed, and the laughter. Sentiment and cigars
+took up the wondrous tale.
+
+"Oh, what a lovely night!" said the ladies, looking above.
+
+"Charming," said the gentlemen, looking below.
+
+The faint-smelling cool Autumn air was pleasant after the feast.
+Fragrant weeds burned bright about the garden.
+
+"We are split into couples," said Adrian to Richard, who was
+standing alone, eying the landscape. "'Tis the influence of the
+moon! Apparently we are in Cyprus. How has my son enjoyed himself?
+How likes he the society of Aspasia? I feel like a wise Greek
+to-night."
+
+Adrian was jolly, and rolled comfortably as he talked. Ripton had
+been carried off by the sentimental bosom. He came up to them and
+whispered: "By Jove, Ricky! do you know what sort of women these
+are?"
+
+Richard said he thought them a nice sort.
+
+"Puritan!" exclaimed Adrian, slapping Ripton on the back. "Why
+didn't you get tipsy, sir? Don't you ever intoxicate yourself except
+at lawful marriages? Reveal to us what you have done with the portly
+dame?"
+
+Ripton endured his bantering that he might hang about Richard, and
+watch over him. He was jealous of his innocent Beauty's husband
+being in proximity with such women. Murmuring couples passed them to
+and fro.
+
+"By Jove, Ricky!" Ripton favoured his friend with another hard
+whisper, "there's a woman smoking!"
+
+"And why not, O Riptonus?" said Adrian. "Art unaware that woman
+cosmopolitan is woman consummate? and dost grumble to pay the small
+price for the splendid gem?"
+
+"Well, I don't like women to smoke," said plain Ripton.
+
+"Why mayn't they do what men do?" the hero cried impetuously. "I
+hate that contemptible narrow-mindedness. It's that makes the ruin
+and horrors I see. Why mayn't they do what men do? I like the women
+who are brave enough not to be hypocrites. By heaven! if these women
+are bad, I like them better than a set of hypocritical creatures who
+are all show, and deceive you in the end."
+
+"Bravo!" shouted Adrian. "There speaks the regenerator."
+
+Ripton, as usual, was crushed by his leader. He had no argument. He
+still thought women ought not to smoke; and he thought of one far
+away, lonely by the sea, who was perfect without being cosmopolitan.
+
+THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP remarks that: "Young men take joy in nothing so
+much as the thinking women Angels: and nothing sours men of
+experience more than knowing that all are not quite so."
+
+The Aphorist would have pardoned Ripton Thompson his first Random
+extravagance, had he perceived the simple warm-hearted worship of
+feminine goodness Richard's young bride had inspired in the breast
+of the youth. It might possibly have taught him to put deeper trust
+in our nature.
+
+Ripton thought of her, and had a feeling of sadness. He wandered
+about the grounds by himself, went through an open postern, and
+threw himself down among some bushes on the slope of the hill. Lying
+there, and meditating, he became aware of voices conversing.
+
+"What does he want?" said a woman's voice. "It's another of his
+villainies, I know. Upon my honour, Brayder, when I think of what I
+have to reproach him for, I think I must go mad, or kill him."
+
+"Tragic!" said the Hon. Peter. "Haven't you revenged yourself,
+Bella, pretty often? Best deal openly. This is a commercial
+transaction. You ask for money, and you are to have it--on the
+conditions: double the sum, and debts paid."
+
+"He applies to me!"
+
+"You know, my dear Bella, it has long been all up between you. I
+think Mount has behaved very well, considering all he knows. He's
+not easily hoodwinked, you know. He resigns himself to his fate, and
+follows other game."
+
+"Then the condition is, that I am to seduce this young man?"
+
+"My dear Bella! you strike your bird like a hawk. I didn't say
+seduce. Hold him in--play with him. Amuse him."
+
+"I don't understand half-measures."
+
+"Women seldom do."
+
+"How I hate you, Brayder!"
+
+"I thank your ladyship."
+
+The two walked farther. Ripton had heard some little of the
+colloquy. He left the spot in a serious mood, apprehensive of
+something dark to the people he loved, though he had no idea of what
+the Hon. Peter's stipulation involved.
+
+On the voyage back to town, Richard was again selected to sit by
+Mrs. Mount. Brayder and Adrian started the jokes. The pair of
+parasites got on extremely well together. Soft fell the plash of the
+oars; softly the moonlight curled around them; softly the banks
+glided by. The ladies were in a state of high sentiment. They sang
+without request. All deemed the British ballad-monger an appropriate
+interpreter of their emotions. After good wine, and plenty thereof,
+fair throats will make men of taste swallow that remarkable
+composer. Eyes, lips, hearts; darts and smarts and sighs; beauty,
+duty; bosom, blossom; false one, farewell! To this pathetic strain
+they melted. Mrs. Mount, though strongly requested, declined to
+sing. She preserved her state. Under the tall aspens of
+Brentford-ait, and on they swept, the white moon in their wake.
+Richard's hand lay open by his side. Mrs. Mount's little white hand
+by misadventure fell into it. It was not pressed, or soothed for its
+fall, or made intimate with eloquent fingers. It lay there like a
+bit of snow on the cold ground. A yellow leaf wavering down from the
+aspens struck Richard's cheek, and he drew away the very hand to
+throw back his hair and smooth his face, and then folded his arms,
+unconscious of offence. He was thinking ambitiously of his life: his
+blood was untroubled, his brain calmly working.
+
+"Which is the more perilous?" is a problem put by the PILGRIM: "To
+meet the temptings of Eve, or to pique her?"
+
+Mrs. Mount stared at the young man as at a curiosity, and turned to
+flirt with one of her Court. The Guardsmen were mostly sentimental.
+One or two rattled, and one was such a good-humoured fellow that
+Adrian could not make him ridiculous. The others seemed to give
+themselves up to a silent waxing in length of limb. However far they
+sat removed, everybody was entangled in their legs. Pursuing his
+studies, Adrian came to the conclusion, that the same close
+intellectual and moral affinity which he had discovered to exist
+between our nobility and our yeomanry, is to be observed between the
+Guardsman class, and that of the corps de ballet: they both live by
+the strength of their legs, where also their wits, if they do not
+altogether reside there, are principally developed: both are volage;
+wine, tobacco, and the moon, influence both alike; and admitting the
+one marked difference that does exist, it is, after all, pretty
+nearly the same thing to be coquetting and sinning on two legs as on
+the point of a toe.
+
+A long Guardsman with a deep bass voice sang a doleful song about
+the twining tendrils of the heart ruthlessly torn, but required
+urgent persuasions and heavy trumpeting of his lungs to get to the
+end: before he had accomplished it, Adrian had contrived to raise a
+laugh in his neighbourhood, so that the company was divided, and the
+camp split: jollity returned to one-half, while sentiment held the
+other. Ripton, blotted behind the bosom, was only lucky in securing
+a higher degree of heat than was possible for the rest. "Are you
+cold?" she would ask, smiling charitably.
+
+"_I_ am," said the mignonne, as if to excuse her conduct.
+
+"You always appear to be," the fat one sniffed and snapped.
+
+"Won't you warm two, Mrs. Mortimer?" said the naughty little woman.
+
+Disdain prevented any further notice of her. Those familiar with the
+ladies enjoyed their sparring, which was frequent. The mignonne was
+heard to whisper: "That poor fellow will certainly be stewed."
+
+Very prettily the ladies took and gave warmth, for the air on the
+water was chill and misty. Adrian had beside him the demure one who
+had stopped the circulation of his anecdote. She in nowise objected
+to the fair exchange, but said "Hush!" betweenwhiles.
+
+Past Kew and Hammersmith, on the cool smooth water; across Putney
+reach; through Battersea bridge; and the City grew around them, and
+the shadows of great mill-factories slept athwart the moonlight.
+
+All the ladies prattled sweetly of a charming day when they alighted
+on land. Several cavaliers crushed for the honour of conducting Mrs.
+Mount to her home.
+
+"My brougham's here; I shall go alone," said Mrs. Mount. "Some one
+arrange my shawl."
+
+She turned her back to Richard, who had a view of a delicate neck as
+he manipulated with the bearing of a mailed knight.
+
+"Which way are you going?" she asked carelessly, and, to his reply
+as to the direction, said: "Then I can give you a lift," and she
+took his arm with a matter-of-course air, and walked up the stairs
+with him.
+
+Ripton saw what had happened. He was going to follow: the portly
+dame retained him, and desired him to get her a cab.
+
+"Oh, you happy fellow!" said the bright-eyed mignonne, passing by.
+
+Ripton procured the cab, and stuffed it full without having to get
+into it himself.
+
+"Try and let him come in too?" said the persecuting creature, again
+passing.
+
+"Take liberties with your men--you shan't with me," retorted the
+angry bosom, and drove off.
+
+"So she's been and gone and run away and left him after all his
+trouble!" cried the pert little thing, peering into Ripton's eyes.
+"Now you'll never be so foolish as to pin your faith to fat women
+again. There! he shall be made happy another time." She gave his
+nose a comical tap, and tripped away with her possessor.
+
+Ripton rather forgot his friend for some minutes: Random thoughts
+laid hold of him. Cabs and carriages rattled past. He was sure he
+had been among members of the nobility that day, though when they
+went by him now they only recognized him with an effort of the
+eyelids. He began to think of the day with exultation, as an event.
+Recollections of the mignonne were captivating. "Blue eyes--just
+what I like! And such a little impudent nose, and red lips,
+pouting--the very thing I like! And her hair? darkish, I think--say
+brown. And so saucy, and light on her feet. And kind she is, or she
+wouldn't have talked to me like that." Thus, with a groaning soul,
+he pictured her. His reason voluntarily consigned her to the
+aristocracy as a natural appanage: but he did amorously wish that
+Fortune had made a lord of him.
+
+Then his mind reverted to Mrs. Mount, and the strange bits of the
+conversation he had heard on the hill. He was not one to suspect
+anybody positively. He was timid of fixing a suspicion. It hovered
+indefinitely, and clouded people, without stirring him to any
+resolve. Still the attentions of the lady toward Richard were queer.
+He endeavoured to imagine they were in the nature of things, because
+Richard was so handsome that any woman must take to him. "But he's
+married," said Ripton, "and he mustn't go near these people if he's
+married." Not a high morality, perhaps: better than none at all:
+better for the world were it practised more. He thought of Richard
+along with that sparkling dame, alone with her. The adorable beauty
+of his dear bride, her pure heavenly face, swam before him. Thinking
+of her, he lost sight of the mignonne who had made him giddy.
+
+He walked to Richard's hotel, and up and down the street there,
+hoping every minute to hear his step; sometimes fancying he might
+have returned and gone to bed. Two o'clock struck. Ripton could not
+go away. He was sure he should not sleep if he did. At last the cold
+sent him homeward, and leaving the street, on the moonlight side of
+Piccadilly he met his friend patrolling with his head up and that
+swing of the feet proper to men who are chanting verses.
+
+"Old Rip!" cried Richard, cheerily. "What on earth are you doing
+here at this hour of the morning?"
+
+Ripton muttered of his pleasure at meeting him. "I wanted to shake
+your hand before I went home."
+
+Richard smiled on him in an amused kindly way. "That all? You may
+shake my hand any day, like a true man as you are, old Rip! I've
+been speaking about you. Do you know, that--Mrs. Mount--never saw
+you all the time at Richmond, or in the boat!"
+
+"Oh!" Ripton said, well assured that he was a dwarf: "you saw her
+safe home?"
+
+"Yes. I've been there for the last couple of hours--talking. She
+talks capitally: she's wonderfully clever. She's very like a man,
+only much nicer. I like her."
+
+"But, Richard, excuse me--I'm sure I don't mean to offend you--but
+now you're married ... perhaps you couldn't help seeing her home,
+but I think you really indeed oughtn't to have gone upstairs."
+
+Ripton delivered this opinion with a modest impressiveness.
+
+"What do you mean?" said Richard. "You don't suppose I care for any
+woman but my little darling down there." He laughed.
+
+"No; of course not. That's absurd. What I mean is, that people
+perhaps will--you know, they do--they say all manner of things, and
+that makes unhappiness, and ... I do wish you were going home
+to-morrow, Ricky. I mean, to your dear wife." Ripton blushed and
+looked away as he spoke.
+
+The hero gave one of his scornful glances. "So you're anxious about
+my reputation. I hate that way of looking on women. Because they
+have been once misled--look how much weaker they are!--because the
+world has given them an ill fame, you would treat them as
+contagious, and keep away from them for the sake of your character!"
+
+"It would be different with me," quoth Ripton.
+
+"How?" asked the hero.
+
+"Because I'm worse than you," was all the logical explanation Ripton
+was capable of.
+
+"I do hope you will go home soon," he added.
+
+"Yes," said Richard, "and I, so do I hope so. But I've work to do
+now. I dare not, I cannot, leave it. Lucy would be the last to ask
+me;--you saw her letter yesterday. Now listen to me, Rip. I want to
+make you be just to women."
+
+Then he read Ripton a lecture on erring women, speaking of them as
+if he had known them and studied them for years. Clever, beautiful,
+but betrayed by love, it was the first duty of all true men to
+cherish and redeem them. "We turn them into curses, Rip; these
+divine creatures." And the world suffered for it. That--that was the
+root of all the evil in the world!
+
+"I don't feel anger or horror at these poor women, Rip! It's
+strange. I knew what they were when we came home in the boat. But I
+do--it tears my heart to see a young girl given over to an old
+man--a man she doesn't love. That's shame!--Don't speak of it."
+
+Forgetting to contest the premise, that all betrayed women are
+betrayed by love, Ripton was quite silenced. He, like most young
+men, had pondered somewhat on this matter, and was inclined to be
+sentimental when he was not hungry. They walked in the moonlight by
+the railings of the park. Richard harangued at leisure, while
+Ripton's teeth chattered. Chivalry might be dead, but still there
+was something to do, went the strain. The lady of the day had not
+been thrown in the hero's path without an object, he said; and he
+was sadly right there. He did not express the thing clearly;
+nevertheless Ripton understood him to mean, he intended to rescue
+that lady from further transgressions, and show a certain scorn of
+the world. That lady, and then other ladies unknown, were to be
+rescued. Ripton was to help. He and Ripton were to be the knights of
+this enterprise. When appealed to, Ripton acquiesced, and shivered.
+Not only were they to be knights, they would have to be Titans, for
+the powers of the world, the spurious ruling Social Gods, would have
+to be defied and overthrown. And Titan number one flung up his
+handsome bold face as if to challenge base Jove on the spot; and
+Titan number two strained the upper button of his coat to meet
+across his pocket-handkerchief on his chest, and warmed his fingers
+under his coat-tails. The moon had fallen from her high seat and was
+in the mists of the West, when he was allowed to seek his blankets,
+and the cold acting on his friend's eloquence made Ripton's flesh
+very contrite. The poor fellow had thinner blood than the hero; but
+his heart was good. By the time he had got a little warmth about
+him, his heart gratefully strove to encourage him in the conception
+of becoming a knight and a Titan; and so striving Ripton fell asleep
+and dreamed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+MRS. BERRY ON MATRIMONY
+
+
+Behold the hero embarked in the redemption of an erring beautiful
+woman.
+
+     "Alas!" writes the Pilgrim at this very time to Lady Blandish,
+     "I cannot get that legend of the Serpent from me, the more I
+     think. Has he not caught you, and ranked you foremost in his
+     legions? For see: till you were fashioned, the fruits hung
+     immobile on the boughs. They swayed before us, glistening and
+     cold. The hand must be eager that plucked them. They did not
+     come down to us, and smile, and speak our language, and read
+     our thoughts, and know when to fly, when to follow! how surely
+     to have us!
+
+     "Do but mark one of you standing openly in the track of the
+     Serpent. What shall be done with her? I fear the world is wiser
+     than its judges! Turn from her, says the world. By day the sons
+     of the world do. It darkens, and they dance together downward.
+     Then comes there one of the world's elect who deems old counsel
+     devilish; indifference to the end of evil worse than its
+     pursuit. He comes to reclaim her. From deepest bane will he
+     bring her back to highest blessing. Is not that a bait already?
+     Poor fish! 'tis wondrous flattering. The Serpent has slimed her
+     so to secure him! With slow weary steps he draws her into
+     light: she clings to him; she is human; part of his work, and
+     he loves it. As they mount upward, he looks on her more, while
+     she, it may be, looks above. What has touched him? What has
+     passed out of her, and into him? The Serpent laughs below. At
+     the gateways of the Sun they fall together!"
+
+This alliterative production was written without any sense of the
+peril that makes prophecy.
+
+It suited Sir Austin to write thus. It was a channel to his acrimony
+moderated through his philosophy. The letter was a reply to a
+vehement entreaty from Lady Blandish for him to come up to Richard
+and forgive him thoroughly: Richard's name was not mentioned in it.
+
+"He tries to be more than he is," thought the lady: and she began
+insensibly to conceive him less than he was.
+
+The baronet was conscious of a certain false gratification in his
+son's apparent obedience to his wishes and complete submission; a
+gratification he chose to accept as his due, without dissecting or
+accounting for it. The intelligence reiterating that Richard waited,
+and still waited; Richard's letters, and more his dumb abiding and
+practical penitence; vindicated humanity sufficiently to stop the
+course of virulent aphorisms. He could speak, we have seen, in
+sorrow for this frail nature of ours, that he had once stood forth
+to champion. "But how long will this last?" he demanded, with the
+air of Hippias. He did not reflect how long it had lasted. Indeed,
+his indigestion of wrath had made of him a moral Dyspepsy.
+
+It was not mere obedience that held Richard from the arms of his
+young wife: nor was it this new knightly enterprise he had presumed
+to undertake. Hero as he was, a youth, open to the insane promptings
+of hot blood, he was not a fool. There had been talk between him and
+Mrs. Doria of his mother. Now that he had broken from his father,
+his heart spoke for her. She lived, he knew: he knew no more. Words
+painfully hovering along the borders of plain speech had been
+communicated to him, filling him with moody imaginings. If he
+thought of her, the red was on his face, though he could not have
+said why. But now, after canvassing the conduct of his father, and
+throwing him aside as a terrible riddle, he asked Mrs. Doria to tell
+him of his other parent. As softly as she could she told the story.
+To her the shame was past: she could weep for the poor lady. Richard
+dropped no tears. Disgrace of this kind is always present to a son,
+and, educated as he had been, these tidings were a vivid fire in his
+brain. He resolved to hunt her out, and take her from the man. Here
+was work set to his hand. All her dear husband did was right to
+Lucy. She encouraged him to stay for that purpose, thinking it also
+served another. There was Tom Bakewell to watch over Lucy: there
+was work for him to do. Whether it would please his father he did
+not stop to consider. As to the justice of the act, let us say
+nothing.
+
+On Ripton devolved the humbler task of grubbing for Sandoe's place
+of residence; and as he was unacquainted with the name by which the
+poet now went in private, his endeavours were not immediately
+successful. The friends met in the evening at Lady Blandish's
+town-house, or at the Foreys', where Mrs. Doria procured the reverer
+of the Royal Martyr, and staunch conservative, a favourable
+reception. Pity, deep pity for Richard's conduct Ripton saw
+breathing out of Mrs. Doria. Algernon Feverel treated his nephew
+with a sort of rough commiseration, as a young fellow who had run
+off the road.
+
+Pity was in Lady Blandish's eyes, though for a different cause. She
+doubted if she did well in seconding his father's unwise
+scheme--supposing him to have a scheme. She saw the young husband
+encompassed by dangers at a critical time. Not a word of Mrs. Mount
+had been breathed to her, but the lady had some knowledge of life.
+She touched on delicate verges to the baronet in her letters, and he
+understood her well enough. "If he loves this person to whom he has
+bound himself, what fear for him? Or are you coming to think it
+something that bears the name of love because we have to veil the
+rightful appellation?" So he responded, remote among the mountains.
+She tried very hard to speak plainly. Finally he came to say, that
+he denied himself the pleasure of seeing his son specially, that he
+for a time might be put to the test the lady seemed to dread. This
+was almost too much for Lady Blandish. Love's charity boy so loftily
+serene now that she saw him half denuded--a thing of shanks and
+wrists--was a trial for her true heart.
+
+Going home at night Richard would laugh at the faces made about his
+marriage. "We'll carry the day, Rip, my Lucy and I! or I'll do it
+alone--what there is to do." He slightly adverted to a natural want
+of courage in women, which Ripton took to indicate that his Beauty
+was deficient in that quality. Up leapt the Old Dog; "I'm sure there
+never was a braver creature upon earth, Richard! She's as brave as
+she's lovely, I'll swear she is! Look how she behaved that day! How
+her voice sounded! She was trembling.... Brave? She'd follow you
+into battle Richard!"
+
+And Richard rejoined: "Talk on, dear old Rip! She's my darling love,
+whatever she is! And she is gloriously lovely. No eyes are like
+hers. I'll go down to-morrow morning the first thing."
+
+Ripton only wondered the husband of such a treasure could remain
+apart from it. So thought Richard for a space.
+
+"But if I go, Rip," he said despondently, "if I go for a day even I
+shall have undone all my work with my father. She says it
+herself--you saw it in her last letter."
+
+"Yes," Ripton assented, and the words "Please remember me to dear
+Mr. Thompson," fluttered about the Old Dog's heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It came to pass that Mrs. Berry, having certain business that led
+her through Kensington Gardens, spied a figure that she had once
+dandled in long clothes, and helped make a man of, if ever woman
+did. He was walking under the trees beside a lady, talking to her,
+not indifferently. The gentleman was her bridegroom and her babe. "I
+know his back," said Mrs. Berry, as if she had branded a mark on it
+in infancy. But the lady was not her bride. Mrs. Berry diverged from
+the path, and got before them on the left flank; she stared,
+retreated, and came round upon the right. There was that in the
+lady's face which Mrs. Berry did not like. Her innermost question
+was, why he was not walking with his own wife? She stopped in front
+of them. They broke, and passed about her. The lady made a laughing
+remark to him, whereat he turned to look, and Mrs. Berry bobbed. She
+had to bob a second time, and then he remembered the worthy
+creature, and hailed her Penelope, shaking her hand so that he put
+her in countenance again. Mrs. Berry was extremely agitated. He
+dismissed her, promising to call upon her in the evening. She heard
+the lady slip out something from a side of her lip, and they both
+laughed as she toddled off to a sheltering tree to wipe a corner of
+each eye. "I don't like the looks of that woman," she said, and
+repeated it resolutely.
+
+"Why doesn't he walk arm-in-arm with her?" was her next inquiry.
+"Where's his wife?" succeeded it. After many interrogations of the
+sort, she arrived at naming the lady a bold-faced thing; adding
+subsequently, brazen. The lady had apparently shown Mrs. Berry that
+she wished to get rid of her, and had checked the outpouring of her
+emotions on the breast of her babe. "I know a lady when I see one,"
+said Mrs. Berry. "I haven't lived with 'em for nothing; and if she's
+a lady bred and born, I wasn't married in the church alive."
+
+Then, if not a lady, what was she? Mrs. Berry desired to know.
+"She's imitation lady, I'm sure she is!" Berry vowed. "I say she
+don't look proper."
+
+Establishing the lady to be a spurious article, however, what was
+one to think of a married man in company with such? "Oh no! it ain't
+that!" Mrs. Berry returned immediately on the charitable tack.
+"Belike it's some one of his acquaintance 've married her for her
+looks, and he've just met her.... Why it'd be as bad as my Berry!"
+the relinquished spouse of Berry ejaculated, in horror at the idea
+of a second man being so monstrous in wickedness. "Just coupled,
+too!" Mrs. Berry groaned on the suspicious side of the debate. "And
+such a sweet young thing for his wife! But no, I'll never believe
+it. Not if he tell me so himself! And men don't do that," she
+whimpered.
+
+Women are swift at coming to conclusions in these matters; soft
+women exceedingly swift: and soft women who have been betrayed are
+rapid beyond measure. Mrs. Berry had not cogitated long ere she
+pronounced distinctly and without a shadow of dubiosity: "My opinion
+is--married or not married, and wheresomever he pick her up--she's
+nothin' more nor less than a Bella Donna!" as which poisonous plant
+she forthwith registered the lady in the botanical note-book of her
+brain. It would have astonished Mrs. Mount to have heard her person
+so accurately hit off at a glance.
+
+In the evening Richard made good his promise, accompanied by Ripton.
+Mrs. Berry opened the door to them. She could not wait to get him
+into the parlour. "You're my own blessed babe; and I'm as good as
+your mother,--though I didn't suck ye, bein' a maid!" she cried,
+falling into his arms, while Richard did his best to support the
+unexpected burden. Then reproaching him tenderly for his guile--at
+mention of which Ripton chuckled, deeming it his own most honourable
+portion of the plot--Mrs. Berry led them into the parlour, and
+revealed to Richard who she was, and how she had tossed him, and
+hugged him, and kissed him all over, when he was only that
+big--showing him her stumpy fat arm. "I kissed ye from head to tail,
+I did," said Mrs. Berry, "and you needn't be ashamed of it. It's be
+hoped you'll never have nothin' worse come t'ye, my dear!"
+
+Richard assured her he was not a bit ashamed, but warned her that
+she must not do it now, Mrs. Berry admitting it was out of the
+question now, and now that he had a wife, moreover. The young men
+laughed, and Ripton laughing over-loudly drew on himself Mrs.
+Berry's attention: "But that Mr. Thompson there--however he can look
+me in the face after his inn'cence! helping blindfold an old
+woman!--though I ain't sorry for what I did--that I'm free for to
+say, and it's over, and blessed be all! Amen! So now where is she
+and how is she, Mr. Richard, my dear--it's only cuttin' off the 's'
+and you are as you was.--Why didn't ye bring her with ye to see her
+old Berry?"
+
+Richard hurriedly explained that Lucy was still in the Isle of
+Wight.
+
+"Oh! and you've left her for a day or two?" said Mrs. Berry.
+
+"Good God! I wish it had been a day or two," cried Richard.
+
+"Ah! and how long have it been?" asked Mrs. Berry, her heart
+beginning to beat at his manner of speaking.
+
+"Don't talk about it," said Richard.
+
+"Oh! you never been dudgeonin' already? Oh! you haven't been peckin'
+at one another yet?" Mrs. Berry exclaimed.
+
+Ripton interposed to tell her such fears were unfounded.
+
+"Then how long ha' you been divided?"
+
+In a guilty voice Ripton stammered "since September."
+
+"September!" breathed Mrs. Berry, counting on her fingers,
+"September, October, Nov--two months and more! nigh three! A young
+married husband away from the wife of his bosom nigh three months!
+Oh my! Oh my! what do that mean?"
+
+"My father sent for me--I'm waiting to see him," said Richard. A few
+more words helped Mrs. Berry to comprehend the condition of affairs.
+Then Mrs. Berry spread her lap, flattened out her hands, fixed her
+eyes, and spoke.
+
+"My dear young gentleman!--I'd like to call ye my darlin' babe! I'm
+going to speak as a mother to ye, whether ye likes it or no; and
+what old Berry says, you won't mind, for she's had ye when there was
+no conventionals about ye, and she has the feelin's of a mother to
+you, though humble her state. If there's one that know matrimony
+it's me, my dear, though Berry did give me no more but nine months
+of it: and I've known the worst of matrimony, which, if you wants to
+be woful wise, there it is for ye. For what have been my gain? That
+man gave me nothin' but his name; and Bessy Andrews was as good as
+Bessy Berry, though both is 'Bs,' and says he, you was 'A,' and now
+you's 'B,' so you're my A B, he says, write yourself down that, he
+says, the bad man, with his jokes!--Berry went to service." Mrs.
+Berry's softness came upon her. "So I tell ye, Berry went to
+service. He left the wife of his bosom forlorn and he went to
+service; because he were al'ays an ambitious man, and wasn't, so to
+speak, happy out of his uniform--which was his livery--not even in
+my arms: and he let me know it. He got among them kitchen sluts,
+which was my mournin' ready made, and worse than a widow's cap to
+me, which is no shame to wear, and some say becoming. There's no man
+as ever lived known better than my Berry how to show his legs to
+advantage, and gals look at 'em. I don't wonder now that Berry was
+prostrated. His temptations was strong, and his flesh was weak. Then
+what I say is, that for a young married man--be he whomsoever he may
+be--to be separated from the wife of his bosom--a young sweet thing,
+and he an innocent young gentleman!--so to sunder, in their state,
+and be kep' from each other, I say it's as bad as bad can be! For
+what is matrimony, my dears? We're told it's a holy Ordnance. And
+why are ye so comfortable in matrimony? For that ye are not a
+sinnin'! And they that severs ye they tempts ye to stray: and you
+learn too late the meanin' o' them blessin's of the priest--as it was
+ordained. Separate--what comes? Fust it's like the circulation of your
+blood a-stoppin'--all goes wrong. Then there's misunderstandings--ye've
+both lost the key. Then, behold ye, there's birds o' prey hoverin' over
+each on ye, and it's which'll be snapped up fust. Then--Oh, dear! Oh,
+dear! it be like the devil come into the world again." Mrs. Berry
+struck her hands and moaned. "A day I'll give ye: I'll go so far as a
+week: but there's the outside. Three months dwellin' apart! That's not
+matrimony, it's divorcin'! what can it be to her but widowhood?
+widowhood with no cap to show for it! And what can it be to you, my
+dear? Think! you been a bachelor three months! and a bachelor man,"
+Mrs. Berry shook her head most dolefully, "he ain't a widow woman.
+I don't go to compare you to Berry, my dear young gentleman. Some
+men's hearts is vagabonds born--they must go astray--it's their natur'
+to. But all men are men, and I know the foundation of 'em, by reason
+of my woe."
+
+Mrs. Berry paused. Richard was humorously respectful to the sermon.
+The truth in the good creature's address was not to be disputed, or
+despised, notwithstanding the inclination to laugh provoked by her
+quaint way of putting it. Ripton nodded encouragingly at every
+sentence, for he saw her drift, and wished to second it.
+
+Seeking for an illustration of her meaning, Mrs. Berry solemnly
+continued: "We all know what checked prespiration is." But neither
+of the young gentlemen could resist this. Out they burst in a roar
+of laughter.
+
+"Laugh away," said Mrs. Berry. "I don't mind ye. I say agin, we all
+do know what checked prespiration is. It fly to the lungs, it gives
+ye mortal inflammation, and it carries ye off. Then I say checked
+matrimony is as bad. It fly to the heart, and it carries off the
+virtue that's in ye, and you might as well be dead! Them that is
+joined it's their salvation not to separate! It don't so much matter
+before it. That Mr. Thompson there--if he go astray, it ain't from
+the blessed fold. He hurt himself alone--not double, and belike
+treble, for who can say now what may be? There's time for it. I'm
+for holding back young people so that they knows their minds,
+howsomever they rattles about their hearts. I ain't a speeder of
+matrimony, and good's my reason! but where it's been done--where
+they're lawfully joined, and their bodies made one, I do say this,
+that to put division between 'em then, it's to make wanderin' comets
+of 'em--creatures without a objeck, and no soul can say what they's
+good for but to rush about!"
+
+Mrs. Berry here took a heavy breath, as one who has said her utmost
+for the time being.
+
+"My dear old girl," Richard went up to her and, applauding her on
+the shoulder, "you're a very wise old woman. But you mustn't speak
+to me as if I wanted to stop here. I'm compelled to. I do it for her
+good chiefly."
+
+"It's your father that's doin' it, my dear?"
+
+"Well, I'm waiting his pleasure."
+
+"A pretty pleasure! puttin' a snake in the nest of young
+turtle-doves! And why don't she come up to you?"
+
+"Well, that you must ask her. The fact is, she's a little timid
+girl--she wants me to see him first, and when I've made all right,
+then she'll come."
+
+"A little timid girl!" cried Mrs. Berry. "Oh, lor', how she must ha'
+deceived ye to make ye think that! Look at that ring," she held out
+her finger, "he's a stranger: he's not my lawful! You know what ye
+did to me, my dear. Could I get my own wedding-ring back from her?
+'No!' says she, firm as a rock, 'he said, _with this ring_ I thee
+wed'--I think I see her now, with her pretty eyes and lovesome
+locks--a darlin'!--And that ring she'd keep to, come life, come
+death. And she must ha' been a rock for me to give in to her in
+that. For what's the consequence? Here am I," Mrs. Berry smoothed
+down the back of her hand mournfully, "here am I in a strange ring,
+that's like a strange man holdin' of me, and me a-wearin' of it just
+to seem decent, and feelin' all over no better than a b---- a
+big--that nasty name I can't abide!--I tell you, my dear, she ain't
+soft, no!--except to the man of her heart; and the best of women's
+too soft there--more's our sorrow!"
+
+"Well, well!" said Richard, who thought he knew.
+
+"I agree with you, Mrs. Berry," Ripton struck in, "Mrs. Richard
+would do anything in the world her husband asked her, I'm quite
+sure."
+
+"Bless you for your good opinion, Mr. Thompson! Why, see her! she
+ain't frail on her feet; she looks ye straight in the eyes; she
+ain't one of your hang-down misses. Look how she behaved at the
+ceremony!"
+
+"Ah!" sighed Ripton.
+
+"And if you'd ha' seen her when she spoke to me about my ring!
+Depend upon it, my dear Mr. Richard, if she blinded you about the
+nerve she've got, it was somethin' she thought she ought to do for
+your sake, and I wish I'd been by to counsel her, poor blessed
+babe!--And how much longer, now, can ye stay divided from that
+darlin'?"
+
+Richard paced up and down.
+
+"A father's will," urged Mrs. Berry, "that's a son's law; but he
+mustn't go again' the laws of his nature to do it."
+
+"Just be quiet at present--talk of other things, there's a good
+woman," said Richard.
+
+Mrs. Berry meekly folded her arms.
+
+"How strange, now, our meetin' like this! meetin' at all, too!" she
+remarked contemplatively. "It's them advertisements! They brings
+people together from the ends of the earth, for good or for bad. I
+often say, there's more lucky accidents, or unlucky ones, since
+advertisements was the rule, than ever there was before. They make a
+number of romances, depend upon it! Do you walk much in the Gardens,
+my dear?"
+
+"Now and then," said Richard.
+
+"Very pleasant it is there with the fine folks and flowers and
+titled people," continued Mrs. Berry. "That was a handsome woman you
+was a-walkin' beside, this mornin'."
+
+"Very," said Richard.
+
+"She was a handsome woman! or I should say, is, for her day ain't
+past, and she know it. I thought at first--by her back--it might ha'
+been your aunt, Mrs. Forey; for she do step out well and hold up her
+shoulders: straight as a dart she be! But when I come to see her
+face--Oh, dear me! says I, this ain't one of the family. They none
+of 'em got such bold faces--nor no _lady_ as I know have. But she's
+a fine woman--that nobody can gainsay."
+
+Mrs. Berry talked further of the fine woman. It was a liberty she
+took to speak in this disrespectful tone of her, and Mrs. Berry was
+quite aware that she was laying herself open to rebuke. She had her
+end in view. No rebuke was uttered, and during her talk she observed
+intercourse passing between the eyes of the young men.
+
+"Look here, Penelope," Richard stopped her at last. "Will it make
+you comfortable if I tell you I'll obey the laws of my nature and go
+down at the end of the week?"
+
+"I'll thank the Lord of heaven if you do!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Very well, then--be happy--I will. Now listen. I want you to keep
+your rooms for me--those she had. I expect, in a day or two, to
+bring a lady here"----
+
+"A lady?" faltered Mrs. Berry.
+
+"Yes. A lady."
+
+"May I make so bold as to ask what lady?"
+
+"You may not. Not now. Of course you will know."
+
+Mrs. Berry's short neck made the best imitation it could of an
+offended swan's action. She was very angry. She said she did not
+like so many ladies, which natural objection Richard met by saying
+that there was only one lady.
+
+"And Mrs. Berry," he added, dropping his voice. "You will treat her
+as you did my dear girl, for she will require not only shelter but
+kindness. I would rather leave her with you than with any one. She
+has been very unfortunate."
+
+His serious air and habitual tone of command fascinated the softness
+of Berry, and it was not until he had gone that she spoke out.
+"Unfort'nate! He's going to bring me an unfort'nate female! Oh! not
+from my babe can I bear that! Never will I have her here! I see it.
+It's that bold-faced woman he's got mixed up in, and she've been and
+made the young man think he'll go for to reform her. It's one o'
+their arts--that is; and he's too innocent a young man to mean
+anythin' else. But I ain't a house of Magdalens--no! and sooner than
+have her here I'd have the roof fall over me, I would."
+
+She sat down to eat her supper on the sublime resolve.
+
+In love, Mrs. Berry's charity was all on the side of the law, and
+this is the case with many of her sisters. The PILGRIM sneers at
+them for it, and would have us credit that it is their admirable
+instinct which, at the expense of every virtue save one, preserves
+the artificial barrier simply to impose upon us. Men, I presume, are
+hardly fair judges, and should stand aside and mark.
+
+Early next day Mrs. Berry bundled off to Richard's hotel to let him
+know her determination. She did not find him there. Returning
+homeward through the park, she beheld him on horseback riding by the
+side of the identical lady. The sight of this public exposure
+shocked her more than the secret walk under the trees. "You don't
+look near your reform yet," Mrs. Berry apostrophized her. "You don't
+look to me one that'd come the Fair Penitent till you've left off
+bein' fair--if then you do, which some of ye don't. Laugh away and
+show yer airs! Spite o' your hat and feather, and your ridin' habit,
+you're a Bella Donna." Setting her down again absolutely for such,
+whatever it might signify, Mrs. Berry had a virtuous glow.
+
+In the evening she heard the noise of wheels stopping at the door.
+"Never!" she rose from her chair to exclaim. "He ain't rided her out
+in the mornin', and been and made a Magdalen of her afore dark?"
+
+A lady veiled was brought into the house by Richard. Mrs. Berry
+feebly tried to bar his progress in the passage. He pushed past her,
+and conducted the lady into the parlour without speaking. Mrs. Berry
+did not follow. She heard him murmur a few sentences within. Then he
+came out. All her crest stood up, as she whispered vigorously, "Mr.
+Richard! if that woman stay here, I go forth. My house ain't a
+penitentiary for unfort'nate females, sir"----
+
+He frowned at her curiously; but as she was on the point of renewing
+her indignant protest, he clapped his hand across her mouth, and
+spoke words in her ear that had awful import to her. She trembled,
+breathing low: "My God, forgive me! Lady Feverel is it? Your mother,
+Mr. Richard?" And her virtue was humbled.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+AN ENCHANTRESS
+
+
+One may suppose that a prematurely aged, oily little man; a poet in
+bad circumstances; a decrepit butterfly chained to a disappointed
+inkstand, will not put out strenuous energies to retain his ancient
+paramour when a robust young man comes imperatively to demand his
+mother of him in her person. The colloquy was short between Diaper
+Sandoe and Richard. The question was referred to the poor spiritless
+lady, who, seeing that her son made no question of it, cast herself
+on his hands. Small loss to her was Diaper; but he was the loss of
+habit, and that is something to a woman who has lived. The blood of
+her son had been running so long alien from her that the sense of
+her motherhood smote her now with strangeness, and Richard's stern
+gentleness seemed like dreadful justice come upon her. Her heart had
+almost forgotten its maternal functions. She called him Sir, till he
+bade her remember he was her son. Her voice sounded to him like that
+of a broken-throated lamb, so painful and weak it was, with the
+plaintive stop in the utterance. When he kissed her, her skin was
+cold. Her thin hand fell out of his when his grasp relaxed. "Can sin
+hunt one like this?" he asked, bitterly reproaching himself for the
+shame she had caused him to endure, and a deep compassion filled his
+breast.
+
+Poetic justice had been dealt to Diaper the poet. He thought of all
+he had sacrificed for this woman--the comfortable quarters, the
+friend, the happy flights. He could not but accuse her of
+unfaithfulness in leaving him in his old age. Habit had legalized
+his union with her. He wrote as pathetically of the break of habit
+as men feel at the death of love; and when we are old and have no
+fair hope tossing golden locks before us, a wound to this our second
+nature is quite as sad. I know not even if it be not actually
+sadder.
+
+Day by day Richard visited his mother. Lady Blandish and Ripton
+alone were in the secret. Adrian let him do as he pleased. He
+thought proper to tell him that the public recognition he accorded
+to a particular lady was, in the present state of the world,
+scarcely prudent.
+
+"'Tis a proof to me of your moral rectitude, my son, but the world
+will not think so. No one character is sufficient to cover two--in a
+Protestant country especially. The divinity that doth hedge a Bishop
+would have no chance in contact with your Madam Danae. Drop the
+woman, my son. Or permit _me_ to speak what you would have her
+hear."
+
+Richard listened to him with disgust.
+
+"Well, you've had my doctorial warning," said Adrian, and plunged
+back into his book.
+
+When Lady Feverel had revived to take part in the consultations Mrs.
+Berry perpetually opened on the subject of Richard's matrimonial
+duty, another chain was cast about him. "Do not, oh, do not offend
+your father!" was her one repeated supplication. Sir Austin had
+grown to be a vindictive phantom in her mind. She never wept but
+when she said this.
+
+So Mrs. Berry, to whom Richard had once made mention of Lady
+Blandish as the only friend he had among women, bundled off in her
+black-satin dress to obtain an interview with her, and an ally.
+After coming to an understanding on the matter of the visit, and
+reiterating many of her views concerning young married people, Mrs.
+Berry said: "My lady, if I may speak so bold, I'd say the sin that's
+bein' done is the sin o' the lookers-on. And when everybody appear
+frightened by that young gentleman's father, I'll say--hopin' your
+pardon--they no cause be frighted at all. For though it's nigh
+twenty year since I knew him, and I knew him then just sixteen
+months--no more--I'll say his heart's as soft as a woman's, which
+I've cause for to know. And that's it. That's where everybody's
+deceived by him, and I was. It's because he keeps his face, and
+makes ye think you're dealin' with a man of iron, and all the while
+there's a woman underneath. And a man that's like a woman he's the
+puzzle o' life! We can see through ourselves, my lady, and we can
+see through men, but one o' that sort--he's like somethin' out of
+nature. Then I say--hopin' be excused--what's to do is for to treat
+him _like_ a woman, and not for to let him 'ave his own way--which
+he don't know himself, and is why nobody else do. Let that sweet
+young couple come together, and be wholesome in spite of him, I say;
+and then give him time to come round, just like a woman; and round
+he'll come, and give 'em his blessin', and we shall know we've made
+him comfortable. He's angry because matrimony have come between him
+and his son, and he, woman-like, he's wantin' to treat what is as if
+it isn't. But matrimony's a holier than him. It began long long
+before him, and it's be hoped will endoor long's the time after, if
+the world's not coming to rack--wishin' him no harm."
+
+Now Mrs. Berry only put Lady Blandish's thoughts in bad English. The
+lady took upon herself seriously to advise Richard to send for his
+wife. He wrote, bidding her come. Lucy, however, had wits, and
+inexperienced wits are as a little knowledge. In pursuance of her
+sage plan to make the family feel her worth, and to conquer the
+members of it one by one, she had got up a correspondence with
+Adrian, whom it tickled. Adrian constantly assured her all was going
+well: time would heal the wound if both the offenders had the
+fortitude to be patient: he fancied he saw signs of the baronet's
+relenting: they must do nothing to arrest those favourable symptoms.
+Indeed the wise youth was languidly seeking to produce them. He
+wrote, and felt, as Lucy's benefactor. So Lucy replied to her
+husband a cheerful rigmarole he could make nothing of, save that she
+was happy in hope, and still had fears. Then Mrs. Berry trained her
+fist to indite a letter to her bride. Her bride answered it by
+saying she trusted to time. "You poor marter," Mrs. Berry wrote
+back, "I know what your sufferin's be. They is the only kind a wife
+should never hide from her husband. He thinks all sorts of things if
+she can abide being away. And you trusting to time, why it's like
+trusting not to catch cold out of your natural clothes." There was
+no shaking Lucy's firmness.
+
+Richard gave it up. He began to think that the life lying behind him
+was the life of a fool. What had he done in it? He had burnt a rick
+and got married! He associated the two acts of his existence. Where
+was the hero he was to have carved out of Tom Bakewell!--a wretch he
+had taught to lie and chicane: and for what? Great heavens! how
+ignoble did a flash from the light of his aspirations make his
+marriage appear! The young man sought amusement. He allowed his aunt
+to drag him into society, and sick of that he made late evening
+calls on Mrs. Mount, oblivious of the purpose he had in visiting her
+at all. Her man-like conversation, which he took for honesty, was a
+refreshing change on fair lips.
+
+"Call me Bella: I'll call you Dick," said she. And it came to be
+Bella and Dick between them. No mention of Bella occurred in
+Richard's letters to Lucy.
+
+Mrs. Mount spoke quite openly of herself. "I pretend to be no better
+than I am," she said, "and I know I'm no worse than many a woman who
+holds her head high." To back this she told him stories of blooming
+dames of good repute, and poured a little social sewerage into his
+ears.
+
+Also she understood him. "What you want, my dear Dick, is something
+to do. You went and got married like a--hum!--friends must be
+respectful. Go into the Army. Try the turf. I can put you up to a
+trick or two--friends should make themselves useful."
+
+She told him what she liked in him. "You're the only man I was ever
+alone with who don't talk to me of love and make me feel sick. I
+hate men who can't speak to a woman sensibly.--Just wait a minute."
+She left him and presently returned with, "Ah, Dick! old fellow! how
+are you?"--arrayed like a cavalier, one arm stuck in her side, her
+hat jauntily cocked, and a pretty oath on her lips to give reality
+to the costume. "What do you think of me? Wasn't it a shame to make
+a woman of me when I was born to be a man?"
+
+"I don't know that," said Richard, for the contrast in her attire to
+those shooting eyes and lips, aired her sex bewitchingly.
+
+"What! you think I don't do it well?"
+
+"Charming! but I can't forget...."
+
+"Now that is too bad!" she pouted.
+
+Then she proposed that they should go out into the midnight streets
+arm-in-arm, and out they went and had great fits of laughter at her
+impertinent manner of using her eye-glass, and outrageous
+affectation of the supreme dandy.
+
+"They take up men, Dick, for going about in women's clothes, and
+vice versaw, I suppose. You'll bail me, old fellaa, if I have to
+make my bow to the beak, won't you? Say it's becas I'm an honest
+woman and don't care to hide the--a--unmentionables when I wear
+them--as the t'others do," sprinkled with the dandy's famous
+invocations.
+
+He began to conceive romance in that sort of fun.
+
+"You're a wopper, my brave Dick! won't let any peeler take me? by
+Jove!"
+
+And he with many assurances guaranteed to stand by her, while she
+bent her thin fingers trying the muscle of his arm, and reposed upon
+it more. There was delicacy in her dandyism. She was a graceful
+cavalier.
+
+"Sir Julius," as they named the dandy's attire, was frequently
+called for on his evening visits to Mrs. Mount. When he beheld Sir
+Julius he thought of the lady, and "vice versaw," as Sir Julius was
+fond of exclaiming.
+
+Was ever hero in this fashion wooed?
+
+The woman now and then would peep through Sir Julius. Or she would
+sit, and talk, and altogether forget she was impersonating that
+worthy fop.
+
+She never uttered an idea or a reflection, but Richard thought her
+the cleverest woman he had ever met.
+
+All kinds of problematic notions beset him. She was cold as ice, she
+hated talk about love, and she was branded by the world.
+
+A rumour spread that reached Mrs. Doria's ears. She rushed to Adrian
+first. The wise youth believed there was nothing in it. She sailed
+down upon Richard. "Is this true? that you have been seen going
+publicly about with an infamous woman, Richard? Tell me! pray,
+relieve me!"
+
+Richard knew of no person answering to his aunt's description in
+whose company he could have been seen.
+
+"Tell me, I say! Don't quibble. Do you know _any_ woman of bad
+character?"
+
+The acquaintance of a lady very much misjudged and ill-used by the
+world, Richard admitted to.
+
+Urgent grave advice Mrs. Doria tendered her nephew, both from the
+moral and the worldly point of view, mentally ejaculating all the
+while: "That ridiculous System! That disgraceful marriage!" Sir
+Austin in his mountain solitude was furnished with serious stuff to
+brood over.
+
+The rumour came to Lady Blandish. She likewise lectured Richard, and
+with her he condescended to argue. But he found himself obliged to
+instance something he had quite neglected. "Instead of her doing me
+harm, it's I that will do her good."
+
+Lady Blandish shook her head and held up her finger. "This person
+must be very clever to have given you that delusion, dear."
+
+"She _is_ clever. And the world treats her shamefully."
+
+"She complains of her position to you?"
+
+"Not a word. But I will stand by her. She has no friend but me."
+
+"My poor boy! has she made you think that?"
+
+"How unjust you all are!" cried Richard.
+
+"How mad and wicked is the man who can let him be tempted so!"
+thought Lady Blandish.
+
+He would pronounce no promise not to visit her, not to address her
+publicly. The world that condemned her and cast her out was no
+better--worse for its miserable hypocrisy. He knew the world now,
+the young man said.
+
+"My child! the world may be very bad. I am not going to defend it.
+But you have some one else to think of. Have you forgotten you have
+a wife, Richard?"
+
+"Ay! you all speak of her now. There's my aunt: 'Remember you have a
+wife!' Do you think I love any one but Lucy? poor little thing!
+Because I am married am I to give up the society of women?"
+
+"Of women!"
+
+"Isn't she a woman?"
+
+"Too much so!" sighed the defender of her sex.
+
+Adrian became more emphatic in his warnings. Richard laughed at him.
+The wise youth sneered at Mrs. Mount. The hero then favoured him
+with a warning equal to his own in emphasis, and surpassing it in
+sincerity.
+
+"We won't quarrel, my dear boy," said Adrian. "I'm a man of peace.
+Besides, we are not fairly proportioned for a combat. Ride your
+steed to virtue's goal! All I say is, that I think he'll upset you,
+and it's better to go a slow pace and in companionship with the
+children of the sun. You have a very nice little woman for a
+wife--well, good-bye!"
+
+To have his wife and the world thrown at his face, was unendurable
+to Richard; he associated them somewhat after the manner of the rick
+and the marriage. Charming Sir Julius, always gay, always honest,
+dispersed his black moods.
+
+"Why, you're taller," Richard made the discovery.
+
+"Of course I am. Don't you remember you said I was such a little
+thing when I came out of my woman's shell?"
+
+"And how have you done it?"
+
+"Grown to please you."
+
+"Now, if you can do that, you can do anything."
+
+"And so I would do anything."
+
+"You would?"
+
+"Honour!"
+
+"Then" ... his project recurred to him. But the incongruity of
+speaking seriously to Sir Julius struck him dumb.
+
+"Then what?" asked she.
+
+"Then you're a gallant fellow."
+
+"That all?"
+
+"Isn't it enough?"
+
+"Not quite. You were going to say something. I saw it in your eyes."
+
+"You saw that I admired you."
+
+"Yes, but a man mustn't admire a man."
+
+"I suppose I had an idea you were a woman."
+
+"What! when I had the heels of my boots raised half an inch," Sir
+Julius turned one heel, and volleyed out silver laughter.
+
+"I don't come much above your shoulder even now," she said, and
+proceeded to measure her height beside him with arch up-glances.
+
+"You must grow more."
+
+"'Fraid I can't, Dick! Bootmakers can't do it."
+
+"I'll show you how," and he lifted Sir Julius lightly, and bore the
+fair gentleman to the looking-glass, holding him there exactly on a
+level with his head. "Will that do?"
+
+"Yes! Oh, but I can't stay here."
+
+"Why can't you?"
+
+"Why can't I?"
+
+He should have known then--it was thundered at a closed door in him,
+that he played with fire. But the door being closed, he thought
+himself internally secure.
+
+Their eyes met. He put her down instantly.
+
+Sir Julius, charming as he was, lost his vogue. Seeing that, the
+wily woman resumed her shell. The memory of Sir Julius breathing
+about her still, doubled the feminine attraction.
+
+"I ought to have been an actress," she said.
+
+Richard told her he found all natural women had a similar wish.
+
+"Yes! Ah! then! if I had been!" sighed Mrs. Mount, gazing on the
+pattern of the carpet.
+
+He took her hand, and pressed it.
+
+"You are not happy as you are?"
+
+"No."
+
+"May I speak to you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Her nearest eye, setting a dimple of her cheek in motion, slid to
+the corner toward her ear, as she sat with her head sideways to him,
+listening. When he had gone, she said to herself: "Old hypocrites
+talk in that way; but I never heard of a young man doing it, and not
+making love at the same time."
+
+Their next meeting displayed her quieter: subdued as one who had
+been set thinking. He lauded her fair looks. "Don't make me thrice
+ashamed," she petitioned.
+
+But it was not only that mood with her. Dauntless defiance, that
+splendidly befitted her gallant outline and gave a wildness to her
+bright bold eyes, when she would call out: "Happy? who dares say I'm
+not happy? D'you think if the world whips me I'll wince? D'you think
+I care for what they say or do? Let them kill me! they shall never
+get one cry out of me!" and flashing on the young man as if he were
+the congregated enemy, add: "There! now you know me!"--that was a
+mood that well became her, and helped the work. She ought to have
+been an actress.
+
+"This must not go on," said Lady Blandish and Mrs. Doria in unison.
+A common object brought them together. They confined their talk to
+it, and did not disagree. Mrs. Doria engaged to go down to the
+baronet. Both ladies knew it was a dangerous, likely to turn out a
+disastrous, expedition. They agreed to it because it was something
+to do, and doing anything is better than doing nothing. "Do it,"
+said the wise youth, when they made him a third, "do it, if you want
+him to be a hermit for life. You will bring back nothing but his
+dead body, ladies--a Hellenic, rather than a Roman, triumph. He will
+listen to you--he will accompany you to the station--he will hand
+you into the carriage--and when you point to his seat he will bow
+profoundly, and retire into his congenial mists."
+
+Adrian spoke their thoughts. They fretted; they relapsed.
+
+"Speak to him, you, Adrian," said Mrs. Doria. "Speak to the boy
+solemnly. It would be almost better he should go back to that little
+thing he has married."
+
+"Almost?" Lady Blandish opened her eyes. "I have been advising it
+for the last month and more."
+
+"A choice of evils," said Mrs. Doria's sour-sweet face and shake of
+the head.
+
+Each lady saw a point of dissension, and mutually agreed, with
+heroic effort, to avoid it by shutting their mouths. What was more,
+they preserved the peace in spite of Adrian's artifices.
+
+"Well, I'll talk to him again," he said. "I'll try to get the Engine
+on the conventional line."
+
+"Command him!" exclaimed Mrs. Doria.
+
+"Gentle means are, I think, the only means with Richard," said Lady
+Blandish.
+
+Throwing banter aside, as much as he could, Adrian spoke to Richard.
+"You want to reform this woman. Her manner is open--fair and
+free--the traditional characteristic. We won't stop to canvass how
+that particular honesty of deportment that wins your approbation has
+been gained. In her college it is not uncommon. Girls, you know, are
+not like boys. At a certain age they can't be quite natural. It's a
+bad sign if they don't blush, and fib, and affect this and that. It
+wears off when they're women. But a woman who speaks like a man, and
+has all those excellent virtues you admire--where has she learned
+the trick? She tells you. You don't surely approve of the school?
+Well, what is there in it, then? Reform her, of course. The task is
+worthy of your energies. But, if you are appointed to do it, don't
+do it publicly, and don't attempt it just now. May I ask you whether
+your wife participates in this undertaking?"
+
+Richard walked away from the interrogation. The wise youth, who
+hated long unrelieved speeches and had healed his conscience, said
+no more.
+
+Dear tender Lucy! Poor darling! Richard's eyes moistened. Her
+letters seemed sadder latterly. Yet she never called to him to come,
+or he would have gone. His heart leapt up to her. He announced to
+Adrian that he should wait no longer for his father. Adrian placidly
+nodded.
+
+The enchantress observed that her knight had a clouded brow and an
+absent voice.
+
+"Richard--I can't call you Dick now, I really don't know why"--she
+said, "I want to beg a favour of you."
+
+"Name it. I can still call you Bella, I suppose?"
+
+"If you care to. What I want to say is this: when you meet me
+out--to cut it short--please not to recognize me."
+
+"And why?"
+
+"Do you ask to be told _that_?"
+
+"Certainly I do."
+
+"Then look: I won't compromise you."
+
+"I see no harm, Bella."
+
+"No," she caressed his hand, "and there is none. I know that. But,"
+modest eyelids were drooped, "other people do," struggling eyes were
+raised.
+
+"What do we care for other people?"
+
+"Nothing. I don't. Not that!" snapping her finger, "I care for you,
+though." A prolonged look followed the declaration.
+
+"You're foolish, Bella."
+
+"Not quite so giddy--that's all."
+
+He did not combat it with his usual impetuosity. Adrian's abrupt
+inquiry had sunk in his mind, as the wise youth intended it should.
+He had instinctively refrained from speaking to Lucy of this lady.
+But what a noble creature the woman was!
+
+So they met in the park; Mrs. Mount whipped past him; and secrecy
+added a new sense to their intimacy.
+
+Adrian was gratified at the result produced by his eloquence.
+
+Though this lady never expressed an idea, Richard was not mistaken
+in her cleverness. She could make evenings pass gaily, and one was
+not the fellow to the other. She could make you forget she was a
+woman, and then bring the fact startlingly home to you. She could
+read men with one quiver of her half-closed eye-lashes. She could
+catch the coming mood in a man, and fit herself to it. What does a
+woman want with ideas, who can do thus much? Keenness of perception,
+conformity, delicacy of handling, these be all the qualities
+necessary to parasites.
+
+Love would have scared the youth: she banished it from her tongue.
+It may also have been true that it sickened her. She played on his
+higher nature. She understood spontaneously what would be most
+strange and taking to him in a woman. Various as the Serpent of old
+Nile, she acted fallen beauty, humorous indifference, reckless
+daring, arrogance in ruin. And acting thus, what think you?--She did
+it so well because she was growing half in earnest.
+
+"Richard! I am not what I was since I knew you. You will not give me
+up quite?"
+
+"Never, Bella."
+
+"I am not so bad as I'm painted!"
+
+"You are only unfortunate."
+
+"Now that I know you I think so, and yet I am happier."
+
+She told him her history when this soft horizon of repentance seemed
+to throw heaven's twilight across it. A woman's history, you know:
+certain chapters expunged. It was dark enough to Richard.
+
+"Did you love the man?" he asked. "You say you love no one now."
+
+"Did I love him? He was a nobleman and I a tradesman's daughter. No.
+I did not love him. I have lived to learn it. And now I should hate
+him, if I did not despise him."
+
+"Can you be deceived in love?" said Richard, more to himself than to
+her.
+
+"Yes. When we're young we can be very easily deceived. If there is
+such a thing as love, we discover it after we have tossed about and
+roughed it. Then we find the man, or the woman, that suits us:--and
+then it's too late! we can't have him."
+
+"Singular!" murmured Richard, "she says just what my father said."
+
+He spoke aloud: "I could forgive you if you had loved him."
+
+"Don't be harsh, grave judge! How is a girl to distinguish?"
+
+"You had some affection for him? He was the first?"
+
+She chose to admit that. "Yes. And the first who talks of love to a
+girl must be a fool if he doesn't blind her."
+
+"That makes what is called first love nonsense."
+
+"Isn't it?"
+
+He repelled the insinuation. "Because I know it is not, Bella."
+
+Nevertheless she had opened a wider view of the world to him, and a
+colder. He thought poorly of girls. A woman--a sensible, brave,
+beautiful woman seemed, on comparison, infinitely nobler than those
+weak creatures.
+
+She was best in her character of lovely rebel accusing foul
+injustice. "What am I to do? You tell me to be different. How can I?
+What am I to do? Will virtuous people let me earn my bread? I could
+not get a housemaid's place! They wouldn't have me--I see their
+noses smelling! Yes: I can go to the hospital and sing behind a
+screen! Do you expect me to bury myself alive? Why, man, I have
+blood: I can't become a stone. You say I am honest, and I will be.
+Then let me tell you that I have been used to luxuries, and I can't
+do without them. I might have married men--lots would have had me.
+But who marries one like me but a fool? and I could not marry a
+fool. The man I marry I must respect. He could not respect me--I
+should know him to be a fool, and I should be worse off than I am
+now. As I am now, they may look as pious as they like--I laugh at
+them!"
+
+And so forth: direr things. Imputations upon wives: horrible
+exultation at the universal peccancy of husbands. This lovely
+outcast almost made him think she had the right on her side, so
+keenly her Parthian arrows pierced the holy centres of society, and
+exposed its rottenness.
+
+Mrs. Mount's house was discreetly conducted: nothing ever occurred
+to shock him there. The young man would ask himself where the
+difference was between her and the women of society? How base, too,
+was the army of banded hypocrites! He was ready to declare war
+against them on her behalf. His casus belli, accurately worded,
+would have read curiously. Because the world refused to lure the
+lady to virtue with the offer of a housemaid's place, our knight
+threw down his challenge. But the lady had scornfully rebutted this
+prospect of a return to chastity. Then the form of the challenge
+must be: Because the world declined to support the lady in luxury
+for nothing! But what did that mean? In other words: she was to
+receive the devil's wages without rendering him her services. Such
+an arrangement appears hardly fair on the world or on the devil.
+Heroes will have to conquer both before they will get them to
+subscribe to it.
+
+Heroes, however, are not in the habit of wording their declarations
+of war at all. Lance in rest they challenge and they charge. Like
+women they trust to instinct, and graft on it the muscle of men.
+Wide fly the leisurely-remonstrating hosts: institutions are
+scattered, they know not wherefore, heads are broken that have not
+the balm of a reason why. 'Tis instinct strikes! Surely there is
+something divine in instinct.
+
+Still, war declared, where were these hosts? The hero could not
+charge down on the ladies and gentlemen in a ballroom, and spoil the
+quadrille. He had sufficient reticence to avoid sounding his
+challenge in the Law Courts; nor could he well go into the Houses of
+Parliament with a trumpet, though to come to a tussle with the
+nation's direct representatives did seem the likelier method. It was
+likewise out of the question that he should enter every house and
+shop, and battle with its master in the cause of Mrs. Mount. Where,
+then, was his enemy? Everybody was his enemy, and everybody was
+nowhere. Shall he convoke multitudes on Wimbledon Common? Blue
+Policemen, and a distant dread of ridicule, bar all his projects.
+Alas for the hero in our day!
+
+Nothing teaches a strong arm its impotence so much as knocking at
+empty air.
+
+"What can I do for this poor woman?" cried Richard, after fighting
+his phantom enemy till he was worn out.
+
+"O Rip! old Rip!" he addressed his friend, "I'm distracted. I wish I
+was dead! What good am I for? Miserable! selfish! What have I done
+but make every soul I know wretched about me? I follow my own
+inclinations--I make people help me by lying as hard as they
+can--and I'm a liar. And when I've got it I'm ashamed of myself. And
+now when I do see something unselfish for me to do, I come upon
+grins--I don't know where to turn--how to act--and I laugh at myself
+like a devil!"
+
+It was only friend Ripton's ear that was required, so his words went
+for little: but Ripton did say he thought there was small matter to
+be ashamed of in winning and wearing the Beauty of Earth. Richard
+added his customary comment of "Poor little thing!"
+
+He fought his duello with empty air till he was exhausted. A last
+letter written to his father procured him no reply. Then, said he, I
+have tried my utmost. I have tried to be dutiful--my father won't
+listen to me. One thing I can do--I can go down to my dear girl, and
+make her happy, and save her at least from some of the consequences
+of my rashness.
+
+"There's nothing better for me!" he groaned. His great ambition must
+be covered by a house-top: he and the cat must warm themselves on
+the domestic hearth! The hero was not aware that his heart moved him
+to this. His heart was not now in open communion with his mind.
+
+Mrs. Mount heard that her friend was going--would go. She knew he
+was going to his wife. Far from discouraging him, she said nobly:
+"Go--I believe I have kept you. Let us have an evening together, and
+then go: for good, if you like. If not, then to meet again another
+time. Forget me. I shan't forget you. You're the best fellow I ever
+knew, Richard. You are, on my honour! I swear I would not step in
+between you and your wife to cause either of you a moment's
+unhappiness. When I can be another woman I will, and I shall think
+of you then."
+
+Lady Blandish heard from Adrian that Richard was positively going to
+his wife. The wise youth modestly veiled his own merit in bringing
+it about by saying: "I couldn't see that poor little woman left
+alone down there any longer."
+
+"Well! Yes!" said Mrs. Doria, to whom the modest speech was
+repeated, "I suppose, poor boy, it's the best he can do now."
+
+Richard bade them adieu, and went to spend his last evening with
+Mrs. Mount.
+
+The enchantress received him in state.
+
+"Do you know this dress? No? It's the dress I wore when I first met
+you--not when I first saw you. I think I remarked you, sir, before
+you deigned to cast an eye upon humble me. When we first met we
+drank champagne together, and I intend to celebrate our parting in
+the same liquor. Will you liquor with me, old boy?"
+
+She was gay. She revived Sir Julius occasionally. He, dispirited,
+left the talking all to her.
+
+Mrs. Mount kept a footman. At a late hour the man of calves dressed
+the table for supper. It was a point of honour for Richard to sit
+down to it and try to eat. Drinking, thanks to the kindly mother
+nature, who loves to see her children made fools of, is always an
+easier matter. The footman was diligent; the champagne corks feebly
+recalled the file-firing at Richmond.
+
+"We'll drink to what we might have been, Dick," said the
+enchantress.
+
+Oh, the glorious wreck she looked.
+
+His heart choked as he gulped the buzzing wine.
+
+"What! down, my boy?" she cried. "They shall never see me hoist
+signals of distress. We must all die, and the secret of the thing is
+to die game, by Jove! Did you ever hear of Laura Fenn? a superb
+girl! handsomer than your humble servant--if you'll believe it--a
+'Miss' in the bargain, and as a consequence, I suppose, a much
+greater rake. She was in the hunting-field. Her horse threw her, and
+she fell plump on a stake. It went into her left breast. All the
+fellows crowded round her, and one young man, who was in love with
+her--he sits in the House of Peers now--we used to call him 'Duck'
+because he was such a dear--he dropped from his horse to his knees:
+'Laura! Laura! my darling! speak a word to me!--the last!' She
+turned over all white and bloody! 'I--I shan't be in at the death!'
+and gave up the ghost! Wasn't that dying game? Here's to the example
+of Laura Fenn! Why, what's the matter? See! it makes a man turn pale
+to hear how a woman can die. Fill the glasses, John. Why, you're as
+bad!"
+
+"It's give me a turn, my lady," pleaded John, and the man's hand was
+unsteady as he poured out the wine.
+
+"You ought not to listen. Go, and drink some brandy."
+
+John footman went from the room.
+
+"My brave Dick! Richard! what a face you've got!"
+
+He showed a deep frown on a colourless face.
+
+"Can't you bear to hear of blood? You know, it was only one naughty
+woman out of the world. The clergyman of the parish didn't refuse to
+give her decent burial. We are Christians! Hurrah!"
+
+She cheered, and laughed. A lurid splendour glanced about her like
+lights from the pit.
+
+"Pledge me, Dick! Drink, and recover yourself. Who minds? We must
+all die--the good and the bad. Ashes to ashes--dust to dust--and
+wine for living lips! That's poetry--almost. Sentiment: 'May we
+never say die till we've drunk our fill!' Not bad--eh? A little
+vulgar, perhaps, by Jove! Do you think me horrid?"
+
+"Where's the wine?" Richard shouted. He drank a couple of glasses in
+succession, and stared about. Was he in hell, with a lost soul
+raving to him?
+
+"Nobly spoken! and nobly acted upon, my brave Dick! Now we'll be
+companions. 'She wished that heaven had made her such a man.' Ah,
+Dick! Dick! too late! too late!"
+
+Softly fell her voice. Her eyes threw slanting beams.
+
+"Do you see this?"
+
+She pointed to a symbolic golden anchor studded with gems and coiled
+with a rope of hair in her bosom. It was a gift of his.
+
+"Do you know when I stole the lock? Foolish Dick! you gave me an
+anchor without a rope. Come and see."
+
+She rose from the table, and threw herself on the sofa.
+
+"Don't you recognize your own hair! I should know a thread of mine
+among a million."
+
+Something of the strength of Samson went out of him as he inspected
+his hair on the bosom of Delilah.
+
+"And you knew nothing of it! You hardly know it now you see it! What
+couldn't a woman steal from you? But you're not vain, and that's a
+protection. You're a miracle, Dick: a man that's not vain! Sit
+here." She curled up her feet to give him place on the sofa. "Now
+let us talk like friends that part to meet no more. You found a ship
+with fever on board, and you weren't afraid to come alongside and
+keep her company. The fever isn't catching, you see. Let us mingle
+our tears together. Ha! ha! a man said that once to me. The
+hypocrite wanted to catch the fever, but he was too old. How old are
+you, Dick?"
+
+Richard pushed a few months forward.
+
+"Twenty-one? You just look it, you blooming boy. Now tell me my age,
+Adonis!--Twenty--_what_?"
+
+Richard had given the lady twenty-five years.
+
+She laughed violently. "You don't pay compliments, Dick. Best to be
+honest; guess again. You don't like to? Not twenty-five, or twenty-four,
+or twenty-three, or--see how he begins to start!--twenty-two. Just
+twenty-one, my dear. I think, my birthday's somewhere in next month.
+Why, look at me, close--closer. Have I a wrinkle?"
+
+"And when, in heaven's name!" ... he stopped short.
+
+"I understand you. When did I commence for to live? At the ripe age
+of sixteen I saw a nobleman in despair because of my beauty. He
+vowed he'd die. I didn't want him to do that. So to save the poor
+man for his family, I ran away with him, and I dare say they didn't
+appreciate the sacrifice, and he soon forgot to, if he ever did.
+It's the way of the world!"
+
+Richard seized some dead champagne, emptied the bottle into a
+tumbler, and drank it off.
+
+John footman entered to clear the table, and they were left without
+further interruption.
+
+"Bella! Bella!" Richard uttered in a deep sad voice, as he walked
+the room.
+
+She leaned on her arm, her hair crushed against a reddened cheek,
+her eyes half-shut and dreamy.
+
+"Bella!" he dropped beside her. "You are unhappy."
+
+She blinked and yawned, as one who is awakened suddenly. "I think
+you spoke," said she.
+
+"You are unhappy, Bella. You can't conceal it. Your laugh sounds
+like madness. You must be unhappy. So young, too! Only twenty-one!"
+
+"What does it matter? Who cares for me?"
+
+The mighty pity falling from his eyes took in her whole shape. She
+did not mistake it for tenderness, as another would have done.
+
+"Who cares for you, Bella? I do. What makes my misery now, but to
+see you there, and know of no way of helping you? Father of mercy!
+it seems too much to have to stand by powerless while such ruin is
+going on!"
+
+Her hand was shaken in his by the passion of torment with which his
+frame quaked.
+
+Involuntarily a tear started between her eyelids. She glanced up at
+him quickly, then looked down, drew her hand from his, and smoothed
+it, eying it.
+
+"Bella! you have a father alive!"
+
+"A linen draper, dear. He wears a white neck-cloth."
+
+This article of apparel instantaneously changed the tone of the
+conversation, for he, rising abruptly, nearly squashed the lady's
+lap-dog, whose squeaks and howls were piteous, and demanded the
+most fervent caresses of its mistress. It was: "Oh, my poor pet
+Mumpsy, and he didn't like a nasty great big ugly heavy foot on
+his poor soft silky--mum--mum--back, he didn't, and he soodn't
+that he--mum--mum--soodn't; and he cried out and knew the place
+to come to, and was oh so sorry for what had happened to
+him--mum--mum--mum--and now he was going to be made happy, his
+mistress make him happy--mum--mum--mum--moo-o-o-o."
+
+"Yes!" said Richard, savagely, from the other end of the room, "you
+care for the happiness of your dog."
+
+"A course se does," Mumpsy was simperingly assured in the thick of
+his silky flanks.
+
+Richard looked for his hat. Mumpsy was deposited on the sofa in a
+twinkling.
+
+"Now," said the lady, "you must come and beg Mumpsy's pardon,
+whether you meant to do it or no, because little doggies can't tell
+that--how should they? And there's poor Mumpsy thinking you're a
+great terrible rival that tries to squash him all flat to nothing,
+on purpose, pretending you didn't see; and he's trembling, poor dear
+wee pet! And I may love my dog, sir, if I like; and I do; and I
+won't have him ill-treated, for he's never been jealous of you, and
+he is a darling, ten times truer than men, and I love him fifty
+times better. So come to him with me."
+
+First a smile changed Richard's face; then laughing a melancholy
+laugh, he surrendered to her humour, and went through the form of
+begging Mumpsy's pardon.
+
+"The dear dog! I do believe he saw we were getting dull," said she.
+
+"And immolated himself intentionally? Noble animal!"
+
+"Well, we'll act as if we thought so. Let us be gay, Richard, and
+not part like ancient fogies. Where's your fun? You can rattle; why
+don't you? You haven't seen me in one of my characters--not Sir
+Julius: wait a couple of minutes." She ran out.
+
+A white visage reappeared behind a spring of flame. Her black hair
+was scattered over her shoulders and fell half across her brows. She
+moved slowly, and came up to him, fastening weird eyes on him,
+pointing a finger at the region of witches. Sepulchral cadences
+accompanied the representation. He did not listen, for he was
+thinking what a deadly charming and exquisitely horrid witch she
+was. Something in the way her underlids worked seemed to remind him
+of a forgotten picture; but a veil hung on the picture. There could
+be no analogy, for this was beautiful and devilish, and that, if he
+remembered rightly, had the beauty of seraphs.
+
+His reflections and her performance were stayed by a shriek. The
+spirits of wine had run over the plate she held to the floor. She
+had the coolness to put the plate down on the table, while he
+stamped out the flame on the carpet. Again she shrieked: she thought
+she was on fire. He fell on his knees and clasped her skirts all
+round, drawing his arms down them several times.
+
+Still kneeling, he looked up, and asked, "Do you feel safe now?"
+
+She bent her face glaring down till the ends of her hair touched his
+cheek.
+
+Said she, "Do you?"
+
+Was she a witch verily? There was sorcery in her breath; sorcery in
+her hair: the ends of it stung him like little snakes.
+
+"How do I do it, Dick?" she flung back, laughing.
+
+"Like you do everything, Bella," he said, and took a breath.
+
+"There! I won't be a witch; I won't be a witch: they may burn me to
+a cinder, but I won't be a witch!"
+
+She sang, throwing her hair about, and stamping her feet.
+
+"I suppose I look a figure. I must go and tidy myself."
+
+"No, don't change. I like to see you so." He gazed at her with a
+mixture of wonder and admiration. "I can't think you the same
+person--not even when you laugh."
+
+"Richard," her tone was serious, "you were going to speak to me of
+my parents."
+
+"How wild and awful you looked, Bella!"
+
+"My father, Richard, was a very respectable man."
+
+"Bella, you'll haunt me like a ghost."
+
+"My mother died in my infancy, Richard."
+
+"Don't put up your hair, Bella."
+
+"I was an only child!"
+
+Her head shook sorrowfully at the glistening fire-irons. He followed
+the abstracted intentness of her look, and came upon her words.
+
+"Ah, yes! speak of your father, Bella. Speak of him."
+
+"Shall I haunt you, and come to your bedside, and cry, ''Tis time'?"
+
+"Dear Bella! if you will tell me where he lives, I will go to him.
+He shall receive you. He shall not refuse--he shall forgive you."
+
+"If I haunt you, you can't forget me, Richard."
+
+"Let me go to your father, Bella--let me go to him to-morrow. I'll
+give you my time. It's all I can give. O Bella! let me save you."
+
+"So you like me best dishevelled, do you, you naughty boy! Ha! ha!"
+and away she burst from him, and up flew her hair, as she danced
+across the room, and fell at full length on the sofa.
+
+He felt giddy: bewitched.
+
+"We'll talk of everyday things, Dick," she called to him from the
+sofa. "It's our last evening. Our last? Heigho! It makes me
+sentimental. How's that Mr. Ripson, Pipson, Nipson?--it's not
+complimentary, but I can't remember names of that sort. Why do you
+have friends of that sort? He's not a gentleman. Better is he? Well,
+he's rather _too_ insignificant for me. Why do you sit off there?
+Come to me instantly. There--I'll sit up, and be proper, and you'll
+have plenty of room. Talk, Dick!"
+
+He was reflecting on the fact that her eyes were brown. They had a
+haughty sparkle when she pleased, and when she pleased a soft
+languor circled them. Excitement had dyed her cheeks deep red. He
+was a youth, and she an enchantress. He a hero; she a female
+will-o'-the-wisp.
+
+The eyes were languid now, set in rosy colour.
+
+"You will not leave me yet, Richard? not yet?"
+
+He had no thought of departing.
+
+"It's our last night--I suppose it's our last hour together in this
+world--and I don't want to meet you in the next, for poor Dick will
+have to come to such a very, very disagreeable place to make the
+visit."
+
+He grasped her hand at this.
+
+"Yes, he will! too true! can't be helped: they say I'm handsome."
+
+"You're lovely, Bella."
+
+She drank in his homage.
+
+"Well, we'll admit it. His Highness below likes lovely women, I hear
+say. A gentleman of taste! You don't know all my accomplishments
+yet, Richard."
+
+"I shan't be astonished at anything new, Bella."
+
+"Then hear, and wonder." Her voice trolled out some lively roulades.
+"Don't you think he'll make me his prima donna below? It's nonsense
+to tell me there's no singing there. And the atmosphere will be
+favourable to the voice. No _damp_, you know. You saw the piano--why
+didn't you ask me to sing before? I can sing Italian. I had a
+master--who made love to me. I forgave him because of the
+music-stool--men can't help it on a music-stool, poor dears!"
+
+She went to the piano, struck the notes, and sang--
+
+    "'My heart, my heart--I think 'twill break.'
+
+"Because I'm such a rake. I don't know any other reason. No; I hate
+sentimental songs. Won't sing that. Ta-tiddy-tiddy-iddy--a ... e!
+How ridiculous those women were, coming home from Richmond!
+
+    'Once the sweet romance of story
+      Clad thy moving form with grace;
+    Once the world and all its glory
+      Was but framework to thy face.
+    Ah, too fair!--what I remember,
+      Might my soul recall--but no!
+    To the winds this wretched ember
+      Of a fire that falls so low!'
+
+"Hum! don't much like that. Tum-te-tum-tum--accanto al
+fuoco--heigho! I don't want to show off, Dick--or to break down--so
+I won't try that.
+
+    'Oh! but for thee, oh! but for thee,
+      I might have been a happy wife,
+    And nursed a baby on my knee,
+      And never blushed to give it life.'
+
+"I used to sing that when I was a girl, sweet Richard, and didn't
+know at all, at all, what it meant. Mustn't sing that sort of song
+in company. We're oh! so proper--even we!
+
+    'If I had a husband, what think you I'd do?
+      I'd make it my business to keep him a lover;
+    For when a young gentleman ceases to woo,
+      Some other amusement he'll quickly discover.'
+
+"For such are young gentlemen made of--made of: such are young
+gentlemen made of!"
+
+After this trifling she sang a Spanish ballad sweetly. He was in the
+mood when imagination intensely vivifies everything. Mere suggestion
+of music sufficed. The lady in the ballad had been wronged. Lo! it
+was the lady before him; and soft horns blew; he smelt the languid
+night-flowers; he saw the stars crowd large and close above the arid
+plain: this lady leaning at her window desolate, pouring out her
+abandoned heart.
+
+Heroes know little what they owe to champagne.
+
+The lady wandered to Venice. Thither he followed her at a leap. In
+Venice she was not happy. He was prepared for the misery of any
+woman anywhere. But, oh! to be with her! To glide with phantom-motion
+through throbbing street; past houses muffled in shadow and gloomy
+legends; under storied bridges; past palaces charged with full life in
+dead quietness; past grand old towers, colossal squares, gleaming
+quays, and out, and on with her, on into the silver infinity shaking
+over seas!
+
+Was it the champagne? the music? or the poetry? Something of the two
+former, perhaps: but most the enchantress playing upon him. How many
+instruments cannot clever women play upon at the same moment! And
+this enchantress was not too clever, or he might have felt her
+touch. She was no longer absolutely bent on winning him, or he might
+have seen a manoeuvre. She liked him--liked none better. She
+wished him well. Her pique was satisfied. Still he was handsome, and
+he was going. What she liked him for, she rather--very slightly--wished
+to do away with, or see if it could be done away with: just as one
+wishes to catch a pretty butterfly, without hurting its patterned
+wings. No harm intended to the innocent insect, only one wants to
+inspect it thoroughly, and enjoy the marvel of it, in one's tender
+possession, and have the felicity of thinking one could crush it,
+if one would.
+
+He knew her what she was, this lady. In Seville, or in Venice, the
+spot was on her. Sailing the pathways of the moon it was not
+celestial light that illumined her beauty. Her sin was there: but in
+dreaming to save, he was soft to her sin--drowned it in deep
+mournfulness.
+
+Silence, and the rustle of her dress, awoke him from his musing. She
+swam wave-like to the sofa. She was at his feet.
+
+"I have been light and careless to-night, Richard. Of course I meant
+it. I _must_ be happy with my best friend going to leave me."
+
+Those witch underlids were working brightly.
+
+"You will not forget me? and I shall try ... try...."
+
+Her lips twitched. She thought him such a very handsome fellow.
+
+"If I change--if I can change.... Oh! if you could know what a net
+I'm in, Richard!"
+
+Now at those words, as he looked down on her haggard loveliness, not
+divine sorrow but a devouring jealousy sprang like fire to his
+breast, and set him rocking with horrid pain. He bent closer to her
+pale beseeching face. Her eyes still drew him down.
+
+"Bella! No! no! promise me! swear it!"
+
+"Lost, Richard! lost for ever! give me up!"
+
+He cried: "I never will!" and strained her in his arms, and kissed
+her passionately on the lips.
+
+She was not acting now as she sidled and slunk her half-averted head
+with a kind of maiden shame under his arm, sighing heavily, weeping,
+clinging to him. It was wicked truth.
+
+Not a word of love between them!
+
+Was ever hero in this fashion won?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+THE LITTLE BIRD AND THE FALCON; A BERRY TO THE RESCUE!
+
+
+At a season when the pleasant South-western Island has few
+attractions to other than invalids and hermits enamoured of wind and
+rain, the potent nobleman, Lord Mountfalcon, still lingered there to
+the disgust of his friends and special parasite. "Mount's in for it
+again," they said among themselves. "Hang the women!" was a natural
+sequence. For, don't you see, what a shame it was of the women to be
+always kindling such a very inflammable subject! All understood that
+Cupid had twanged his bow, and transfixed a peer of Britain for the
+fiftieth time: but none would perceive, though he vouched for it
+with his most eloquent oaths, that this was a totally different case
+from the antecedent ones. So it had been sworn to them too
+frequently before. He was as a man with mighty tidings, and no
+language: intensely communicative, but inarticulate. Good round
+oaths had formerly compassed and expounded his noble emotions. They
+were now quite beyond the comprehension of blasphemy, even when
+emphasized, and by this the poor lord divinely felt the case was
+different. There is something impressive in a great human hulk
+writhing under the unutterable torments of a mastery he cannot
+contend with, or account for, or explain by means of intelligible
+words. At first he took refuge in the depths of his contempt for
+women. Cupid gave him line. When he had come to vent his worst of
+them, the fair face now stamped on his brain beamed the more
+triumphantly: so the harpooned whale rose to the surface, and after
+a few convulsions, surrendered his huge length. My lord was in love
+with Richard's young wife. He gave proofs of it by burying himself
+beside her. To her, could she have seen it, he gave further proofs
+of a real devotion, in affecting, and in her presence feeling,
+nothing beyond a lively interest in her well-being. This wonder,
+that when near her he should be cool and composed, and when away
+from her wrapped in a tempest of desires, was matter for what powers
+of cogitation the heavy nobleman possessed.
+
+The Hon. Peter, tired of his journeys to and fro, urged him to press
+the business. Lord Mountfalcon was wiser, or more scrupulous, than
+his parasite. Almost every evening he saw Lucy. The inexperienced
+little wife apprehended no harm in his visits. Moreover, Richard had
+commended her to the care of Lord Mountfalcon, and Lady Judith. Lady
+Judith had left the Island for London: Lord Mountfalcon remained.
+There could be no harm. If she had ever thought so, she no longer
+did. Secretly, perhaps, she was flattered. Lord Mountfalcon was as
+well educated as it is the fortune of the run of titled elder sons
+to be: he could talk and instruct: he was a lord: and he let her
+understand that he was wicked, very wicked, and that she improved
+him. The heroine, in common with the hero, has her ambition to be of
+use in the world--to do some good; and the task of reclaiming a bad
+man is extremely seductive to good women. Dear to their tender
+bosoms as old china is a bad man they are mending! Lord Mountfalcon
+had none of the arts of a libertine: his gold, his title, and his
+person had hitherto preserved him from having long to sigh in vain,
+or sigh at all, possibly: the Hon. Peter did his villainies for him.
+No alarm was given to Lucy's pure instinct, as might have been the
+case had my lord been over-adept. It was nice in her martyrdom to
+have a true friend to support her, and really to be able to do
+something for that friend. Too simple-minded to think much of his
+lordship's position, she was yet a woman. "He, a great nobleman,
+does not scorn to acknowledge me, and think something of me," may
+have been one of the half-thoughts passing through her now and then,
+as she reflected in self-defence on the proud family she had married
+into.
+
+January was watering and freezing old earth by turns, when the Hon.
+Peter travelled down to the sun of his purse with great news. He had
+no sooner broached his lordship's immediate weakness, than
+Mountfalcon began to plunge like a heavy dragoon in difficulties. He
+swore by this and that he had come across an angel for his sins, and
+would do her no hurt. The next moment he swore she must be his,
+though she cursed like a cat. His lordship's illustrations were not
+choice. "I haven't advanced an inch," he groaned. "Brayder! upon my
+soul, that little woman could do anything with me. By heaven! I'd
+marry her to-morrow. Here I am, seeing her every day in the week out
+or in, and what do you think she gets me to talk about?--history!
+Isn't it enough to make a fellow mad? and there am I lecturing like
+a prig, and by heaven! while I'm at it I feel a pleasure in it; and
+when I leave the house I should feel an immense gratification in
+shooting somebody. What do they say in town?"
+
+"Not much," said Brayder, significantly.
+
+"When's that fellow--her husband--coming down?"
+
+"I rather hope we've settled him for life, Mount."
+
+Nobleman and parasite exchanged looks.
+
+"How d'ye mean?"
+
+Brayder hummed an air, and broke it to say, "He's in for Don Juan at
+a gallop, that's all."
+
+"The deuce! Has Bella got him?" Mountfalcon asked with eagerness.
+
+Brayder handed my lord a letter. It was dated from the Sussex coast,
+signed "Richard," and was worded thus:
+
+"My beautiful Devil!--
+
+"Since we're both devils together, and have found each other out,
+come to me at once, or I shall be going somewhere in a hurry. Come,
+my bright hell-star! I ran away from you, and now I ask you to come
+to me! You have taught me how devils love, and I can't do without
+you. Come an hour after you receive this."
+
+Mountfalcon turned over the letter to see if there was any more.
+"Complimentary love-epistle!" he remarked, and rising from his chair
+and striding about, muttered, "The dog! how infamously he treats his
+wife!"
+
+"Very bad," said Brayder.
+
+"How did you get hold of this?"
+
+"Strolled into Bella's dressing-room, waiting for her--turned over
+her pincushion haphazard. You know her trick."
+
+"By Jove! I think that girl does it on purpose. Thank heaven, I
+haven't written her any letters for an age. Is she going to him!"
+
+"Not she! But it's odd, Mount!--did you ever know her refuse money
+before? She tore up the cheque in style, and presented me the
+fragments with two or three of the delicacies of language she learnt
+at your Academy. I rather like to hear a woman swear. It embellishes
+her!"
+
+Mountfalcon took counsel of his parasite as to the end the letter
+could be made to serve. Both conscientiously agreed that Richard's
+behaviour to his wife was infamous, and that he at least deserved no
+mercy. "But," said his lordship, "it won't do to show the letter. At
+first she'll be swearing it's false, and then she'll stick to him
+closer. I know the sluts."
+
+"The rule of contrary," said Brayder, carelessly. "She must see the
+trahison with her eyes. They believe their eyes. There's your
+chance, Mount. You step in: you give her revenge and consolation--two
+birds at one shot. That's what they like."
+
+"You're an ass, Brayder," the nobleman exclaimed. "You're an
+infernal blackguard. You talk of this little woman as if she and
+other women were all of a piece. I don't see anything I gain by this
+confounded letter. Her husband's a brute--that's clear."
+
+"Will you leave it to me, Mount?"
+
+"Be damned before I do!" muttered my lord.
+
+"Thank you. Now see how this will end. You're too soft, Mount.
+You'll be made a fool of."
+
+"I tell you, Brayder, there's nothing to be done. If I carry her
+off--I've been on the point of doing it every day--what'll come of
+that? She'll look--I can't stand her eyes--I shall be a fool--worse
+off with her than I am now."
+
+Mountfalcon yawned despondently. "And what do you think?" he pursued.
+"Isn't it enough to make a fellow gnash his teeth? She's" ... he
+mentioned something in an underbreath, and turned red as he said it.
+
+"Hm!" Brayder put up his mouth and rapped the handle of his cane on
+his chin. "That's disagreeable, Mount. You don't exactly want to act
+in that character. You haven't got a diploma. Bother!"
+
+"Do you think I love her a bit less?" broke out my lord in a frenzy.
+"By heaven! I'd read to her by her bedside, and talk that infernal
+history to her, if it pleased her, all day and all night."
+
+"You're evidently graduating for a midwife, Mount."
+
+The nobleman appeared silently to accept the imputation.
+
+"What do they say in town?" he asked again.
+
+Brayder said the sole question was, whether it was maid, wife, or
+widow.
+
+"I'll go to her this evening," Mountfalcon resumed, after--to judge
+by the cast of his face--reflecting deeply. "I'll go to her this
+evening. She shall know what infernal torment she makes me suffer."
+
+"Do you mean to say she don't know it?"
+
+"Hasn't an idea--thinks me a friend. And so, by heaven! I'll be to
+her."
+
+"A--hm!" went the Honourable Peter. "This way to the sign of the
+Green Man, ladies!"
+
+"Do you want to be pitched out of the window, Brayder?"
+
+"Once was enough, Mount. The Salvage Man is strong. I may have
+forgotten the trick of alighting on my feet. There--there! I'll be
+sworn she's excessively innocent, and thinks you a disinterested
+friend."
+
+"I'll go to her this evening," Mountfalcon repeated. "She shall know
+what damned misery it is to see her in such a position. I can't hold
+out any longer. Deceit's horrible to such a girl as that. I'd rather
+have her cursing me than speaking and looking as she does. Dear
+little girl!--she's only a child. You haven't an idea how sensible
+that little woman is."
+
+"Have you?" inquired the cunning one.
+
+"My belief is, Brayder, that there are angels among women," said
+Mountfalcon, evading his parasite's eye as he spoke.
+
+To the world, Lord Mountfalcon was the thoroughly wicked man; his
+parasite simply ingeniously dissipated. Full many a man of God had
+thought it the easier task to reclaim the Hon. Peter.
+
+Lucy received her noble friend by firelight that evening, and sat
+much in the shade. She offered to have the candles brought in. He
+begged her to allow the room to remain as it was. "I have something
+to say to you," he observed with a certain solemnity.
+
+"Yes--to me?" said Lucy, quickly.
+
+Lord Mountfalcon knew he had a great deal to say, but how to say it,
+and what it exactly was, he did not know.
+
+"You conceal it admirably," he began, "but you must be very lonely
+here--I fear, unhappy."
+
+"I should have been lonely, but for your kindness, my lord," said
+Lucy. "I am not unhappy." Her face was in shade and could not belie
+her.
+
+"Is there any help that one who would really be your friend might
+give you, Mrs. Feverel?"
+
+"None indeed that I know of," Lucy replied. "Who can help us to pay
+for our sins?"
+
+"At least you may permit me to endeavour to pay my debts, since you
+have helped me to wash out some of _my_ sins."
+
+"Ah, my lord!" said Lucy, not displeased. It is sweet for a woman to
+believe she has drawn the serpent's teeth.
+
+"I tell you the truth," Lord Mountfalcon went on. "What object could
+I have in deceiving you? I know you quite above flattery--so
+different from other women!"
+
+"Oh, pray, do not say that," interposed Lucy.
+
+"According to my experience, then."
+
+"But you say you have met such--such very bad women."
+
+"I have. And now that I meet a good one, it is my misfortune."
+
+"Your misfortune, Lord Mountfalcon?"
+
+"Yes, and I might say more."
+
+His lordship held impressively mute.
+
+"How strange men are!" thought Lucy. "He has some unhappy secret."
+
+Tom Bakewell, who had a habit of coming into the room on various
+pretences during the nobleman's visits, put a stop to the
+revelation, if his lordship intended to make any.
+
+When they were alone again, Lucy said, smiling: "Do you know, I am
+always ashamed to ask you to begin to read."
+
+Mountfalcon stared. "To read?--oh! ha! yes!" he remembered his
+evening duties. "Very happy, I'm sure. Let me see. Where were we?"
+
+"The life of the Emperor Julian. But indeed I feel quite ashamed to
+ask you to read, my lord. It's new to me; like a new world--hearing
+about Emperors, and armies, and things that really have been on the
+earth we walk upon. It fills my mind. But it must have ceased to
+interest you, and I was thinking that I would not tease you any
+more."
+
+"Your pleasure is mine, Mrs. Feverel. 'Pon my honour, I'd read till
+I was hoarse, to hear your remarks."
+
+"Are you laughing at me?"
+
+"Do I look so?"
+
+Lord Mountfalcon had fine full eyes, and by merely dropping the lids
+he could appear to endow them with mental expression.
+
+"No, you are not," said Lucy. "I must thank you for your
+forbearance."
+
+The nobleman went on his honour loudly.
+
+Now it was an object of Lucy's to have him reading; for his sake,
+for her sake, and for somebody else's sake; which somebody else was
+probably considered first in the matter. When he was reading to her,
+he seemed to be legitimizing his presence there; and though she had
+no doubts or suspicions whatever, she was easier in her heart while
+she had him employed in that office. So she rose to fetch the book,
+laid it open on the table at his lordship's elbow, and quietly
+waited to ring for candles when he should be willing to commence.
+
+That evening Lord Mountfalcon could not get himself up to the farce,
+and he felt a pity for the strangely innocent unprotected child with
+anguish hanging over her, that withheld the words he wanted to
+speak, or insinuate. He sat silent and did nothing.
+
+"What I do not like him for," said Lucy, meditatively, "is his
+changing his religion. He would have been such a hero, but for that.
+I could have loved him."
+
+"Who is it you could have loved, Mrs. Feverel?" Lord Mountfalcon
+asked.
+
+"The Emperor Julian."
+
+"Oh! the Emperor Julian! Well, he was an apostate: but then, you
+know, he meant what he was about. He didn't even do it for a woman."
+
+"For a woman!" cried Lucy. "What man would for a woman?"
+
+"I would."
+
+"You, Lord Mountfalcon?"
+
+"Yes. I'd turn Catholic to-morrow."
+
+"You make me very unhappy if you say that, my lord."
+
+"Then I'll unsay it."
+
+Lucy slightly shuddered. She put her hand upon the bell to ring for
+lights.
+
+"Do you reject a convert, Mrs. Feverel?" said the nobleman.
+
+"Oh yes! yes! I do. One who does not give his conscience I would not
+have."
+
+"If he gives his heart and body, can he give more?"
+
+Lucy's hand pressed the bell. She did not like the doubtful light
+with one who was so unscrupulous. Lord Mountfalcon had never spoken
+in this way before. He spoke better, too. She missed the
+aristocratic twang in his voice, and the hesitation for words, and
+the fluid lordliness with which he rolled over difficulties in
+speech.
+
+Simultaneously with the sounding of the bell the door opened, and
+presented Tom Bakewell. There was a double knock at the same instant
+at the street door. Lucy delayed to give orders.
+
+"Can it be a letter, Tom?--so late?" she said, changing colour.
+"Pray run and see."
+
+"That an't a powst," Tom remarked, as he obeyed his mistress.
+
+"Are you very anxious for a letter, Mrs. Feverel?" Lord Mountfalcon
+inquired.
+
+"Oh, no--yes, I am, very!" said Lucy. Her quick ear caught the tones
+of a voice she remembered. "That dear old thing has come to see me,"
+she cried, starting up.
+
+Tom ushered a bunch of black satin into the room.
+
+"Mrs. Berry!" said Lucy, running up to her and kissing her.
+
+"Me, my darlin'!" Mrs. Berry, breathless and rosy with her journey,
+returned the salute. "Me truly it is, in fault of a better, for I
+ain't one to stand by and give the devil his licence--roamin'! and
+the salt sure enough have spilte my bride-gown at the beginnin',
+which ain't the best sign. Bless ye!--Oh, here he is." She beheld a
+male figure in a chair by the half light, and swung round to address
+him. "You bad man!" she held aloft one of her fat fingers, "I've
+come on ye like a bolt, I have, and goin' to make ye do your duty,
+naughty boy! But you're my darlin' babe," she melted, as was her
+custom, "and I'll never meet you and not give to ye the kiss of a
+mother."
+
+Before Lord Mountfalcon could find time to expostulate the soft
+woman had him by the neck, and was down among his luxurious
+whiskers.
+
+"Ha!" She gave a smothered shriek, and fell back. "What hair's
+that?"
+
+Tom Bakewell just then illumined the transaction.
+
+"Oh, my gracious!" Mrs. Berry breathed with horror, "I been and kiss
+a strange man!"
+
+Lucy, half-laughing, but in dreadful concern, begged the noble lord
+to excuse the woful mistake.
+
+"Extremely flattered, highly favoured, I'm sure," said his lordship,
+re-arranging his disconcerted moustache; "may I beg the pleasure of
+an introduction?"
+
+"My husband's dear old nurse--Mrs. Berry," said Lucy, taking her
+hand to lend her countenance. "Lord Mountfalcon, Mrs. Berry."
+
+Mrs. Berry sought grace while she performed a series of apologetic
+bobs, and wiped the perspiration from her forehead.
+
+Lucy put her in a chair: Lord Mountfalcon asked for an account of
+her passage over to the Island; receiving distressingly full
+particulars, by which it was revealed that the softness of her heart
+was only equalled by the weakness of her stomach. The recital calmed
+Mrs. Berry down.
+
+"Well, and where's my--where's Mr. Richard? yer husband, my dear?"
+Mrs. Berry turned from her tale to question.
+
+"Did you expect to see him here?" said Lucy, in a broken voice.
+
+"And where else, my love? since he haven't been seen in London a
+whole fortnight."
+
+Lucy did not speak.
+
+"We will dismiss the Emperor Julian till to-morrow, I think," said
+Lord Mountfalcon, rising and bowing.
+
+Lucy gave him her hand with mute thanks. He touched it distantly,
+embraced Mrs. Berry in a farewell bow, and was shown out of the
+house by Tom Bakewell.
+
+The moment he was gone, Mrs. Berry threw up her arms. "Did ye ever
+know sich a horrid thing to go and happen to a virtuous woman!" she
+exclaimed. "I could cry at it, I could! To be goin' and kissin' a
+strange hairy man! Oh, dear me! what's comin' next, I wonder?
+Whiskers! thinks I--for I know the touch o' whiskers--'t ain't like
+other hair--what! have he growed a crop that sudden, I says to
+myself; and it flashed on me I been and made a awful mistake! and
+the lights come in, and I see that great hairy man--beggin' his
+pardon--nobleman, and if I could 'a dropped through the floor out o'
+sight o' men, drat 'em! they're al'ays in the way, that they
+are!"----
+
+"Mrs. Berry," Lucy checked her, "did you expect to find him here?"
+
+"Askin' that solemn?" retorted Berry. "What him? your husband? Of
+course I did! and you got him--somewheres hid."
+
+"I have not heard from my husband for fifteen days," said Lucy, and
+her tears rolled heavily off her cheeks.
+
+'Not heer from him!--fifteen days!" Berry echoed.
+
+"O Mrs. Berry! dear kind Mrs. Berry! have you no news? nothing to
+tell me! I've borne it so long. They're cruel to me, Mrs. Berry. Oh,
+do you know if I have offended him--my husband? While he wrote I did
+not complain. I could live on his letters for years. But not to hear
+from him! To think I have ruined him, and that he repents! Do they
+want to take him from me? Do they want me dead? O Mrs. Berry! I've
+had no one to speak out my heart to all this time, and I cannot,
+cannot help crying, Mrs. Berry!"
+
+Mrs. Berry was inclined to be miserable at what she heard from
+Lucy's lips, and she was herself full of dire apprehension; but it
+was never this excellent creature's system to be miserable in
+company. The sight of a sorrow that was not positive, and could not
+refer to proof, set her resolutely the other way.
+
+"Fiddle-faddle," she said. "I'd like to see him repent! He won't
+find anywheres a beauty like his own dear little wife, and he know
+it. Now, look you here, my dear--you blessed weepin' pet--the man
+that could see ye with that hair of yours there in ruins, and he
+backed by the law, and not rush into your arms and hold ye squeezed
+for life, he ain't got much man in him, I say; and no one can say
+that of my babe! I was sayin', look here, to comfort ye--oh, why,
+to be sure he've got some surprise for ye. And so've I, my lamb!
+Hark, now! His father've come to town, like a good reasonable man at
+last, to u-nite, ye both, and bring your bodies together, as your
+hearts is, for ever-lastin'. Now ain't that news?"
+
+"Oh!" cried Lucy, "that takes my last hope away. I thought he had
+gone to his father." She burst into fresh tears.
+
+Mrs. Berry paused, disturbed.
+
+"Belike he's travellin' after him," she suggested.
+
+"Fifteen days, Mrs. Berry!"
+
+"Ah, fifteen weeks, my dear, after sich a man as that. He's a
+regular meteor, is Sir Austin Feverel, Raynham Abbey. Well, so hark
+you here. I says to myself, that knows him--for I did think my babe
+_was_ in his natural nest--I says, the bar'net'll never write for
+you both to come up and beg forgiveness, so down I'll go and fetch
+you up. For there was your mistake, my dear, ever to leave your
+husband to go away from ye one hour in a young marriage. It's
+dangerous, it's mad, it's wrong, and it's only to be righted by your
+obeyin' of me, as I commands it: for I has my fits, though I _am_ a
+soft 'un. Obey me, and ye'll be happy to-morrow--or the next to it."
+
+Lucy was willing to see comfort. She was weary of her self-inflicted
+martyrdom, and glad to give herself up to somebody else's guidance
+utterly.
+
+"But why does he not write to me, Mrs. Berry?"
+
+"'Cause, 'cause--who can tell the why of men, my dear? But that he
+love ye faithful, I'll swear. Haven't he groaned in my arms that he
+couldn't come to ye?--weak wretch! Hasn't he swore how he loved ye
+to me, poor young man! But this is your fault, my sweet. Yes, it be.
+You should 'a followed my 'dvice at the fust--'stead o' going into
+your 'eroics about this and t'other." Here Mrs. Berry poured forth
+fresh sentences on matrimony, pointed especially at young couples.
+"I should 'a been a fool if I hadn't suffered myself," she
+confessed, "so I'll thank my Berry if I makes you wise in season."
+
+Lucy smoothed her ruddy plump cheeks, and gazed up affectionately
+into the soft woman's kind brown eyes. Endearing phrases passed
+from mouth to mouth. And as she gazed Lucy blushed, as one who has
+something very secret to tell, very sweet, very strange, but cannot
+quite bring herself to speak it.
+
+"Well! there's three men in my life I kissed," said Mrs. Berry, too
+much absorbed in her extraordinary adventure to notice the young
+wife's struggling bosom, "three men, and one nobleman! He've got
+more whisker than my Berry. I wonder what the man thought. Ten to
+one he'll think, now, I was glad o' my chance--they're that vain,
+whether they's lords or commons. How was I to know? I nat'ral thinks
+none but her husband'd sit in that chair. Ha! and in the dark? and
+alone with ye?" Mrs. Berry hardened her eyes, "and your husband
+away? What do this mean? Tell to me, child, what it mean his bein'
+here alone without ere a candle?"
+
+"Lord Mountfalcon is the only friend I have here," said Lucy. "He is
+very kind. He comes almost every evening."
+
+"Lord Muntfalcon--that his name!" Mrs. Berry exclaimed. "I been that
+flurried by the man, I didn't mind it at first. He comes every
+evenin', and your husband out o' sight! My goodness me! it's gettin'
+worse and worse. And what do he come for, now, ma'am? Now tell me
+candid what ye do together here in the dark of an evenin'."
+
+Mrs. Berry glanced severely.
+
+"O Mrs. Berry! please not to speak in that way--I don't like it,"
+said Lucy, pouting.
+
+"What do he come for, I ask?"
+
+"Because he is kind, Mrs. Berry. He sees me very lonely, and wishes
+to amuse me. And he tells me of things I know nothing about and"----
+
+"And wants to be a-teachin' some of his things, mayhap," Mrs. Berry
+interrupted with a ruffled breast.
+
+"You are a very ungenerous, suspicious, naughty old woman," said
+Lucy, chiding her.
+
+"And you're a silly, unsuspectin' little bird," Mrs. Berry retorted,
+as she returned her taps on the cheek. "You haven't told me what ye
+do together, and what's his excuse for comin'."
+
+"Well, then, Mrs. Berry, almost every evening that he comes we read
+History, and he explains the battles, and talks to me about the
+great men. And _he_ says I'm not silly, Mrs. Berry."
+
+"That's one bit o' lime on your wings, my bird. History, indeed!
+History to a young married lovely woman alone in the dark! a pretty
+History! Why, I know that man's name, my dear. He's a notorious
+living rake, that Lord Muntfalcon. No woman's safe with him."
+
+"Ah, but he hasn't deceived me, Mrs. Berry. He has not pretended he
+was good."
+
+"More's his art," quoth the experienced dame. "So you read History
+together in the dark, my dear!"
+
+"I was unwell to-night, Mrs. Berry. I wanted him not to see my face.
+Look! there's the book open ready for him when the candles come in.
+And now, you dear kind darling old thing, let me kiss you for coming
+to me. I do love you. Talk of other things."
+
+"So we will," said Mrs. Berry softening to Lucy's caresses. "So let
+us. A nobleman, indeed! alone with a young wife in the dark, and she
+sich a beauty! I say this shall be put a stop to now and henceforth,
+on the spot it shall! He won't meneuvele Bessy Berry with his arts.
+There! I drop him. I'm dyin' for a cup o' tea, my dear."
+
+Lucy got up to ring the bell, and as Mrs. Berry, incapable of quite
+dropping him, was continuing to say: "Let him go and boast I kiss
+him; he ain't nothin' to be 'shamed of in a chaste woman's
+kiss--unawares--which men don't get too often in their lives, I can
+assure 'em;"--her eye surveyed Lucy's figure.
+
+Lo, when Lucy returned to her, Mrs. Berry surrounded her with her
+arms, and drew her into feminine depths. "Oh, you blessed!" she
+cried in most meaning tone, "you good, lovin', proper little wife,
+you!"
+
+"What is it, Mrs. Berry!" lisps Lucy, opening the most innocent blue
+eyes.
+
+"As if _I_ couldn't see, you pet! It was my flurry blinded me, or
+I'd 'a marked ye the fust shock. Thinkin' to deceive me!"
+
+Mrs. Berry's eyes spoke generations. Lucy's wavered; she coloured
+all over, and hid her face on the bounteous breast that mounted to
+her.
+
+"You're a sweet one," murmured the soft woman, patting her back, and
+rocking her. "You're a rose, you are! and a bud on your stalk.
+Haven't told a word to your husband, my dear?" she asked quickly.
+
+Lucy shook her head, looking sly and shy.
+
+"That's right. We'll give him a surprise; let it come all at once on
+him, and thinks he--losin' breath--'I'm a father!' Nor a hint even
+you haven't give him?"
+
+Lucy kissed her, to indicate it was quite a secret.
+
+"Oh! you _are_ a sweet one," said Bessy Berry, and rocked her more
+closely and lovingly.
+
+Then these two had a whispered conversation, from which let all of
+male persuasion retire a space nothing under one mile.
+
+Returning, after a due interval, we see Mrs. Berry counting on her
+fingers' ends. Concluding the sum, she cries prophetically: "Now
+this right everything--a baby in the balance! Now I say this
+angel-infant come from on high. It's God's messenger, my love! and
+it's not wrong to say so. He thinks you worthy, or you wouldn't 'a
+had one--not for all the tryin' in the world, you wouldn't, and some
+tries hard enough, poor creatures! How let us rejice and make merry!
+I'm for cryin' and laughin', one and the same. This is the blessed
+seal of matrimony, which Berry never stamp on me. It's be hoped it's
+a boy. Make that man a grandfather, and his grandchild a son, and
+you got him safe. Oh! this is what I call happiness, and I'll have
+my tea a little stronger in consequence. I declare I could get tipsy
+to know this joyful news."
+
+So Mrs. Berry carolled. She had her tea a little stronger. She ate
+and she drank; she rejoiced and made merry. The bliss of the chaste
+was hers.
+
+Says Lucy demurely: "Now you know why I read History, and that sort
+of books."
+
+"Do I?" replies Berry. "Belike I do. Since what you done's so good,
+my darlin', I'm agreeable to anything. A fig for all the lords! They
+can't come anigh a baby. You may read Voyages and Travels, my dear,
+and Romances, and Tales of Love and War. You cut the riddle in your
+own dear way, and that's all I cares for."
+
+"No, but you don't understand," persists Lucy. "I only read sensible
+books, and talk of serious things, because I'm sure ... because I
+have heard say ... dear Mrs. Berry! don't you understand now?"
+
+Mrs. Berry smacked her knees. "Only to think of her bein' that
+thoughtful! and she a Catholic, too! Never tell me that people of
+one religion ain't as good as another, after that. Why, you want to
+make him a historian, to be sure! And that rake of a lord who've
+been comin' here playin' at wolf, you been and made him--unbeknown
+to himself--sort o' tutor to the unborn blessed! Ha! ha! say that
+little women ain't got art ekal to the cunningest of 'em. Oh! I
+understand. Why, to be sure, didn't I know a lady, a widow of a
+clergyman: he was a postermost child, and afore his birth that woman
+read nothin' but Blair's 'Grave' over and over again, from the end
+to the beginnin';--that's a serious book!--very hard readin'!--and
+at four years of age that child that come of it reelly was the
+piusest infant!--he was like a little curate. His eyes was up; he
+talked so solemn." Mrs. Berry imitated the little curate's
+appearance and manner of speaking. "So she got her wish, for one!"
+
+But at this lady Lucy laughed.
+
+They chattered on happily till bedtime. Lucy arranged for Mrs. Berry
+to sleep with her. "If it's not dreadful to ye, my sweet, sleepin'
+beside a woman," said Mrs. Berry. "I know it were to me shortly
+after my Berry, and I felt it. It don't somehow seem nat'ral after
+matrimony--a woman in your bed! I was obliged to have somebody, for
+the cold sheets do give ye the creeps when you've been used to that
+that's different."
+
+Upstairs they went together, Lucy not sharing these objections. Then
+Lucy opened certain drawers, and exhibited pretty caps, and laced
+linen, all adapted for a very small body, all the work of her own
+hands: and Mrs. Berry praised them and her. "You been guessing a
+boy--woman-like," she said. Then they cooed, and kissed, and
+undressed by the fire, and knelt at the bedside, with their arms
+about each other, praying; both praying for the unborn child; and
+Mrs. Berry pressed Lucy's waist the moment she was about to breathe
+the petition to heaven to shield and bless that coming life; and
+thereat Lucy closed to her, and felt a strong love for her. Then
+Lucy got into bed first, leaving Berry to put out the light, and
+before she did so, Berry leaned over her, and eyed her roguishly,
+saying, "I never see ye like this, but I'm half in love with ye
+myself, you blushin' beauty! Sweet's your eyes, and your hair do
+take one so--lyin' back. I'd never forgive my father if he kep me
+away from ye four-and-twenty hours just. Husband o' that!" Berry
+pointed at the young wife's loveliness. "Ye look so ripe with
+kisses, and there they are a-languishin'!-- ... You never look so
+but in your bed, ye beauty!--just as it ought to be." Lucy had to
+pretend to rise to put out the light before Berry would give up her
+amorous chaste soliloquy. Then they lay in bed, and Mrs. Berry
+fondled her, and arranged for their departure to-morrow, and
+reviewed Richard's emotions when he came to hear he was going to be
+made a father by her, and hinted at Lucy's delicious shivers when
+Richard was again in his rightful place, which she, Bessy Berry, now
+usurped; and all sorts of amorous sweet things; enough to make one
+fancy the adage subverted, that stolen fruits are sweetest; she drew
+such glowing pictures of bliss within the law and the limits of the
+conscience, till at last, worn out, Lucy murmured "Peepy, dear
+Berry," and the soft woman gradually ceased her chirp.
+
+Bessy Berry did not sleep. She lay thinking of the sweet brave heart
+beside her, and listening to Lucy's breath as it came and went;
+squeezing the fair sleeper's hand now and then, to ease her love as
+her reflections warmed. A storm of wind came howling over the
+Hampshire hills, and sprang white foam on the water, and shook the
+bare trees. It passed, leaving a thin cloth of snow on the wintry
+land. The moon shone brilliantly. Berry heard the house-dog bark.
+His bark was savage and persistent. She was roused by the noise. By
+and by she fancied she heard a movement in the house; then it seemed
+to her that the house-door opened. She cocked her ears, and could
+almost make out voices in the midnight stillness. She slipped from
+the bed, locked and bolted the door of the room, assured herself of
+Lucy's unconsciousness, and went on tiptoe to the window. The trees
+all stood white to the north; the ground glittered; the cold was
+keen. Berry wrapped her fat arms across her bosom, and peeped as
+close over the garden as the situation of the window permitted.
+Berry was a soft, not a timid, woman: and it happened this night
+that her thoughts were above the fears of the dark. She was sure of
+the voices; curiosity without a shade of alarm held her on the
+watch; and gathering bundles of her day-apparel round her neck and
+shoulders, she silenced the chattering of her teeth as well as she
+could, and remained stationary. The low hum of the voices came to a
+break; something was said in a louder tone; the house-door quietly
+shut; a man walked out of the garden into the road. He paused
+opposite her window, and Berry let the blind go back to its place,
+and peeped from behind an edge of it. He was in the shadow of the
+house, so that it was impossible to discern much of his figure.
+After some minutes he walked rapidly away, and Berry returned to the
+bed an icicle, from which Lucy's limbs sensitively shrank.
+
+Next morning Mrs. Berry asked Tom Bakewell if he had been disturbed
+in the night. Tom, the mysterious, said he had slept like a top.
+Mrs. Berry went to the garden. The snow was partially melted; all
+save one spot just under the portal, and there she saw the print of
+a man's foot. By some strange guidance it occurred to her to go and
+find one of Richard's boots. She did so, and, unperceived, she
+measured the sole of the boot in that solitary footmark. There could
+be no doubt that it fitted. She tried it from heel to toe a dozen
+times.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+CLARE'S DIARY
+
+
+Sir Austin Feverel had come to town with the serenity of a
+philosopher who says, 'Tis now time; and the satisfaction of a man
+who has not arrived thereat without a struggle. He had almost
+forgiven his son. His deep love for him had well-nigh shaken loose
+from wounded pride and more tenacious vanity. Stirrings of a remote
+sympathy for the creature who had robbed him of his son and hewed at
+his System, were in his heart of hearts. This he knew; and in his
+own mind he took credit for his softness. But the world must not
+suppose him soft; the world must think he was still acting on his
+System. Otherwise what would his long absence signify?--Something
+highly unphilosophical. So, though love was strong, and was moving
+him to a straightforward course, the last tug of vanity drew him
+still aslant.
+
+The Aphorist read himself so well, that to juggle with himself was a
+necessity. As he wished the world to see him, he beheld himself: one
+who entirely put aside mere personal feelings: one in whom parental
+duty, based on the science of life, was paramount: a Scientific
+Humanist, in short.
+
+He was, therefore, rather surprised at a coldness in Lady Blandish's
+manner when he did appear. "At last!" said the lady, in a sad way
+that sounded reproachfully. Now the Scientific Humanist had, of
+course, nothing to reproach himself with.
+
+But where was Richard?
+
+Adrian positively averred he was not with his wife.
+
+"If he had gone," said the baronet, "he would have anticipated me by
+a few hours."
+
+This, when repeated to Lady Blandish, should have propitiated her,
+and shown his great forgiveness. She, however, sighed, and looked at
+him wistfully.
+
+Their converse was not happy and deeply intimate. Philosophy did not
+seem to catch her mind; and fine phrases encountered a rueful
+assent, more flattering to their grandeur than to their influence.
+
+Days went by. Richard did not present himself. Sir Austin's pitch of
+self-command was to await the youth without signs of impatience.
+
+Seeing this, the lady told him her fears for Richard, and mentioned
+the rumour of him that was about.
+
+"If," said the baronet, "this person, his wife, is what you paint
+her, I do not share your fears for him. I think too well of him. If
+she is one to inspire the sacredness of that union, I think too well
+of him. It is impossible."
+
+The lady saw one thing to be done.
+
+"Call her to you," she said. "Have her with you at Raynham.
+Recognize her. It is the disunion and doubt that so confuses him and
+drives him wild. I confess to you I hoped he had gone to her. It
+seems not. If she is with you his way will be clear. Will you do
+that?"
+
+Science is notoriously of slow movement. Lady Blandish's
+proposition was far too hasty for Sir Austin. Women, rapid by
+nature, have no idea of science.
+
+"We shall see her there in time, Emmeline. At present let it be
+between me and my son."
+
+He spoke loftily. In truth it offended him to be asked to do
+anything, when he had just brought himself to do so much.
+
+A month elapsed, and Richard appeared on the scene.
+
+The meeting between him and his father was not what his father had
+expected and had crooned over in the Welsh mountains. Richard shook
+his hand respectfully, and inquired after his health with the common
+social solicitude. He then said: "During your absence, sir, I have
+taken the liberty, without consulting you, to do something in which
+you are more deeply concerned than myself. I have taken upon myself
+to find out my mother and place her under my care. I trust you will
+not think I have done wrong. I acted as I thought best."
+
+Sir Austin replied: "You are of an age, Richard, to judge for
+yourself in such a case. I would have you simply beware of deceiving
+yourself in imagining that you considered any one but yourself in
+acting as you did."
+
+"I have not deceived myself, sir," said Richard, and the interview
+was over. Both hated an exposure of the feelings, and in that both
+were satisfied: but the baronet, as one who loves, hoped and looked
+for tones indicative of trouble and delight in the deep heart; and
+Richard gave him none of those. The young man did not even face him
+as he spoke: if their eyes met by chance, Richard's were defiantly
+cold. His whole bearing was changed.
+
+"This rash marriage has altered him," said the very just man of
+science in life: and that meant: "it has debased him."
+
+He pursued his reflections. "I see in him the desperate maturity of
+a suddenly-ripened nature: and but for my faith that good work is
+never lost, what should I think of the toil of my years? Lost,
+perhaps to me! lost to him! It may show itself in his children."
+
+The Philosopher, we may conceive, has contentment in benefiting
+embryos: but it was a somewhat bitter prospect to Sir Austin.
+Bitterly he felt the injury to himself.
+
+One little incident spoke well of Richard. A poor woman called at
+the hotel while he was missing. The baronet saw her, and she told
+him a tale that threw Christian light on one part of Richard's
+nature. But this might gratify the father in Sir Austin; it did not
+touch the man of science. A Feverel, his son, would not do less, he
+thought. He sat down deliberately to study his son.
+
+No definite observation enlightened him. Richard ate and drank;
+joked and laughed. He was generally before Adrian in calling for a
+fresh bottle. He talked easily of current topics; his gaiety did not
+sound forced. In all he did, nevertheless, there was not the air of
+a youth who sees a future before him. Sir Austin put that down. It
+might be carelessness, and wanton blood, for no one could say he had
+much on his mind. The man of science was not reckoning that Richard
+also might have learned to act and wear a mask. Dead subjects--this
+is to say, people not on their guard--he could penetrate and
+dissect. It is by a rare chance, as scientific men well know, that
+one has an opportunity of examining the structure of the living.
+
+However, that rare chance was granted to Sir Austin. They were
+engaged to dine with Mrs. Doria at the Foreys', and walked down to
+her in the afternoon, father and son arm-in-arm, Adrian beside them.
+Previously the offended father had condescended to inform his son
+that it would shortly be time for him to return to his wife,
+indicating that arrangements would ultimately be ordered to receive
+her at Raynham. Richard had replied nothing; which might mean excess
+of gratitude, or hypocrisy in concealing his pleasure, or any one of
+the thousand shifts by which gratified human nature expresses itself
+when all is made to run smooth with it. Now Mrs. Berry had her
+surprise ready charged for the young husband. She had Lucy in her
+own house waiting for him. Every day she expected him to call and be
+overcome by the rapturous surprise, and every day, knowing his habit
+of frequenting the park, she marched Lucy thither, under the plea
+that Master Richard, whom she had already christened, should have an
+airing.
+
+The round of the red winter sun was behind the bare Kensington
+chestnuts, when these two parties met. Happily for Lucy and the
+hope she bore in her bosom, she was perversely admiring a fair
+horsewoman galloping by at the moment. Mrs. Berry plucked at her
+gown once or twice, to prepare her eyes for the shock, but Lucy's
+head was still half averted, and thinks Mrs. Berry, "'Twon't hurt
+her if she go into his arms head foremost." They were close; Mrs.
+Berry performed the bob preliminary. Richard held her silent with a
+terrible face; he grasped her arm, and put her behind him. Other
+people intervened. Lucy saw nothing to account for Berry's excessive
+flutter. Berry threw it on the air and some breakfast bacon, which,
+she said, she knew in the morning while she ate it, was bad for the
+bile, and which probably was the cause of her bursting into tears,
+much to Lucy's astonishment.
+
+"What you ate makes you cry, Mrs. Berry?"
+
+"It's all----" Mrs. Berry pressed at her heart and leaned sideways,
+"it's all stomach, my dear. Don't ye mind," and becoming aware of
+her unfashionable behaviour, she trailed off to the shelter of the
+elms.
+
+"You have a singular manner with old ladies," said Sir Austin to his
+son, after Berry had been swept aside. "Scarcely courteous. She
+behaved like a mad woman, certainly.--Are you ill, my son?"
+
+Richard was death-pale, his strong form smitten through with
+weakness. The baronet sought Adrian's eye. Adrian had seen Lucy as
+they passed, and he had a glimpse of Richard's countenance while
+disposing of Berry. Had Lucy recognized them, he would have gone to
+her unhesitatingly. As she did not, he thought it well, under the
+circumstances, to leave matters as they were. He answered the
+baronet's look with a shrug.
+
+"Are you ill, Richard?" Sir Austin again asked his son.
+
+"Come on, sir! come on!" cried Richard.
+
+His father's further meditations, as they stepped briskly to the
+Foreys', gave poor Berry a character which one who lectures on
+matrimony, and has kissed but three men in her life, shrieks to hear
+the very title of.
+
+"Richard will go to his wife to-morrow," Sir Austin said to Adrian
+some time before they went in to dinner.
+
+Adrian asked him if he had chanced to see a young fair-haired lady
+by the side of the old one Richard had treated so peculiarly; and to
+the baronet's acknowledgment that he remembered to have observed
+such a person, Adrian said: "That was his wife, sir."
+
+Sir Austin could not dissect the living subject. As if a bullet had
+torn open the young man's skull, and some blast of battle laid his
+palpitating organization bare, he watched every motion of his brain
+and his heart; and with the grief and terror of one whose mental
+habit was ever to pierce to extremes. Not altogether conscious that
+he had hitherto played with life, he felt that he was suddenly
+plunged into the stormful reality of it. He projected to speak
+plainly to his son on all points that night.
+
+"Richard is very gay," Mrs. Doria whispered her brother.
+
+"All will be right with him to-morrow," he replied; for the game had
+been in his hands so long, so long had he been the God of the
+machine, that having once resolved to speak plainly and to act, he
+was to a certain extent secure, bad as the thing to mend might be.
+
+"I notice he has rather a wild laugh--I don't exactly like his
+eyes," said Mrs. Doria.
+
+"You will see a change in him to-morrow," the man of science
+remarked.
+
+It was reserved for Mrs. Doria herself to experience that change. In
+the middle of the dinner a telegraphic message from her son-in-law,
+worthy John Todhunter, reached the house, stating that Clare was
+alarmingly ill, bidding her come instantly. She cast about for some
+one to accompany her, and fixed on Richard. Before he would give his
+consent for Richard to go, Sir Austin desired to speak with him
+apart, and in that interview he said to his son: "My dear Richard!
+it was my intention that we should come to an understanding together
+this night. But the time is short--poor Helen cannot spare many
+minutes. Let me then say that you deceived me, and that I forgive
+you. We fix our seal on the past. You will bring your wife to me
+when you return." And very cheerfully the baronet looked down on the
+generous future he thus founded.
+
+"Will you have her at Raynham at once, sir?" said Richard.
+
+"Yes, my son, when you bring her."
+
+"Are you mocking me, sir?" "Pray, what do you mean?"
+
+"I ask you to receive her at once."
+
+"Well! the delay cannot be long. I do not apprehend that you will be
+kept from your happiness many days."
+
+"I think it will be some time, sir!" said Richard, sighing deeply.
+
+"And what mental freak is this that can induce you to postpone it
+and play with your first duty?"
+
+"What is my first duty, sir?"
+
+"Since you are married, to be with your wife."
+
+"I have heard that from an old woman called Berry!" said Richard to
+himself, not intending irony.
+
+"Will you receive her at once?" he asked resolutely.
+
+The baronet was clouded by his son's reception of his graciousness.
+His grateful prospect had formerly been Richard's marriage--the
+culmination of his System. Richard had destroyed his participation
+in that. He now looked for a pretty scene in recompense:--Richard
+leading up his wife to him, and both being welcomed by him
+paternally, and so held one ostentatious minute in his embrace.
+
+He said: "Before you return, I demur to receiving her."
+
+"Very well, sir," replied his son, and stood as if he had spoken
+all.
+
+"Really you tempt me to fancy you already regret your rash
+proceeding!" the baronet exclaimed; and the next moment it pained
+him he had uttered the words, Richard's eyes were so sorrowfully
+fierce. It pained him, but he divined in that look a history, and he
+could not refrain from glancing acutely and asking: "Do you?"
+
+"Regret it, sir?" The question aroused one of those struggles in the
+young man's breast which a passionate storm of tears may still, and
+which sink like leaden death into the soul when tears come not.
+Richard's eyes had the light of the desert.
+
+"Do you?" his father repeated. "You tempt me--I almost fear you do."
+At the thought--for he expressed his mind--the pity that he had for
+Richard was not pure gold.
+
+"Ask me what I think of her, sir! Ask me what she is! Ask me what it
+is to have taken one of God's precious angels and chained her to
+misery! Ask me what it is to have plunged a sword into her heart,
+and to stand over her and see such a creature bleeding! Do I regret
+that? Why, yes, I do! Would you?"
+
+His eyes flew hard at his father under the ridge of his eyebrows.
+
+Sir Austin winced and reddened. Did he understand? There is ever in
+the mind's eye a certain wilfulness. We see and understand; we see
+and won't understand.
+
+"Tell me why you passed by her as you did this afternoon," he said
+gravely: and in the same voice Richard answered: "I passed her
+because I could not do otherwise."
+
+"Your wife, Richard?"
+
+"Yes! my wife!"
+
+"If she had seen you, Richard?"
+
+"God spared her that!"
+
+Mrs. Doria, bustling in practical haste, and bearing Richard's hat
+and greatcoat in her energetic hands, came between them at this
+juncture. Dimples of commiseration were in her cheeks while she
+kissed her brother's perplexed forehead. She forgot her trouble
+about Clare, deploring his fatuity.
+
+Sir Austin was forced to let his son depart. As of old, he took
+counsel with Adrian, and the wise youth was soothing. "Somebody has
+kissed him, sir, and the chaste boy can't get over it." This absurd
+suggestion did more to appease the baronet than if Adrian had given
+a veritable reasonable key to Richard's conduct. It set him thinking
+that it might be a prudish strain in the young man's mind, due to
+the System in difficulties.
+
+"I may have been wrong in one thing," he said, with an air of the
+utmost doubt of it. "I, perhaps, was wrong in allowing him so much
+liberty during his probation."
+
+Adrian pointed out to him that he had distinctly commanded it.
+
+"Yes, yes; that is on me."
+
+His was an order of mind that would accept the most burdensome
+charges, and by some species of moral usury make a profit out of
+them.
+
+Clare was little talked of. Adrian attributed the employment of the
+telegraph to John Todhunter's uxorious distress at a toothache, or
+possibly the first symptoms of an heir to his house.
+
+"That child's mind has disease in it. She is not sound," said the
+baronet.
+
+On the door-step of the hotel, when they returned, stood Mrs. Berry.
+Her wish to speak a few words with the baronet reverentially
+communicated, she was ushered upstairs into his room.
+
+Mrs. Berry compressed her person in the chair she was beckoned to
+occupy.
+
+"Well, ma'am, you have something to say," observed the baronet, for
+she seemed loath to commence.
+
+"Wishin' I hadn't:" Mrs. Berry took him up, and mindful of the good
+rule to begin at the beginning, pursued: "I dare say, Sir Austin,
+you don't remember me, and I little thought when last we parted our
+meeting'd be like this. Twenty year don't go over one without
+showin' it, no more than twenty ox. It's a might o' time,--twenty
+year! Leastways not quite twenty, it ain't."
+
+"Round figures are best," Adrian remarked.
+
+"In them round figures a be-loved son have growed up, and got
+himself married!" said Mrs. Berry, diving straight into the case.
+
+Sir Austin then learnt that he had before him the culprit who had
+assisted his son in that venture. It was a stretch of his patience
+to hear himself addressed on a family matter, but he was naturally
+courteous.
+
+"He came to my house, Sir Austin, a stranger! If twenty year alters
+us as have knowed each other on the earth, how must they alter they
+that we parted with just come from heaven! And a heavenly babe he
+were! se sweet! se strong! _so_ fat!"
+
+Adrian laughed aloud.
+
+Mrs. Berry bumped a curtsey to him in her chair, continuing: "I
+wished afore I spoke to say how thankful am I bound to be for my
+pension not cut short, as have offended so, but that I know Sir
+Austin Feverel, Raynham Abbey, ain't one o' them that likes to hear
+their good deeds published. And a pension to me now, it's something
+more than it were. For a pension and pretty rosy cheeks in a maid,
+which I was--that's a bait many a man'll bite, that won't so a
+forsaken wife!"
+
+"If you will speak to the point, ma'am, I will listen to you," the
+baronet interrupted her.
+
+"It's the beginnin' that's the worst, and that's over, thank the
+Lord! So I'll speak, Sir Austin, and say my say:--Lord speed me!
+Believin' our idees o' matrimony to be sim'lar, then, I'll say, once
+married--married for life! Yes! I don't even like widows. For I
+can't stop at the grave. Not at the tomb I can't stop. My husband's
+my husband, and if I'm a body at the Resurrection, I say speaking
+humbly, my Berry is the husband o' my body; and to think of two
+claimin' of me then--it makes me hot all over. Such is my notion of
+that state 'tween man and woman. No givin' in marriage, o' course I
+know, and if so I'm single."
+
+The baronet suppressed a smile. "Really, my good woman, you wander
+very much."
+
+"Beggin' pardon, Sir Austin; but I has my point before me all the
+same, and I'm comin' to it. Ac-knowledgin' our error, it's done, and
+bein' done, it's writ aloft. Oh! if you only knew what a sweet young
+creature she be! Indeed 'taint all of humble birth that's unworthy,
+Sir Austin. And she got her idees, too. She reads History! She talk
+that sensible as would surprise ye. But for all that she's a prey to
+the artful o' men--unpertected. And it's a young marriage--but
+there's no fear for her, as far as she go. The fear's t'other way.
+There's that in a man--at the commencement--which make of him Lord
+knows what, if you any way interferes: whereas a woman bides quiet!
+It's consolation catch her, which is what we mean by seducin'.
+Whereas a man--he's a savage!"
+
+Sir Austin turned his face to Adrian, who was listening with huge
+delight.
+
+"Well, ma'am, I see you have something in your mind, if you would
+only come to it quickly."
+
+"Then here's my point, Sir Austin. I say you bred him so as there
+ain't another young gentleman like him in England, and proud he make
+me. And as for her, I'll risk sayin'--it's done, and no harm--you
+might search England through, and nowhere will ye find a maid that's
+his match like his own wife. Then there they be. Are they together
+as should be? O Lord no! Months they been divided. Then she all
+lonely and exposed, I went, and fetched her out of seducers'
+ways--which they may say what they like, but the inn'cent is most
+open to when they're healthy and confidin'--I fetch her, and--the
+liberty--boxed her safe in my own house. So much for that sweet!
+That you may do with women. But it's him--Mr. Richard--I _am_ bold,
+I know, but there--I'm in for it, and the Lord'll help me! It's him,
+Sir Austin, in this great metropolis, warm from a young marriage.
+It's him, and--I say nothin' of her, and how sweet she bears it, and
+it's eating her at a time when Natur' should have no other trouble
+but the one that's goin' on--it's him, and I ask--so bold--shall
+there--and a Christian gentleman his father--shall there be a tug
+'tween him as a son and him as a husband--soon to be somethin' else?
+I speak bold out--I'd have sons obey their fathers, but the priest's
+words spoke over him, which they're now in my ears, I say I ain't a
+doubt on earth--I'm sure there ain't one in heaven--which dooty's
+the holier of the two."
+
+Sir Austin heard her to an end. Their views on the junction of the
+sexes were undoubtedly akin. To be lectured on his prime subject,
+however, was slightly disagreeable, and to be obliged mentally to
+assent to this old lady's doctrine was rather humiliating, when it
+could not be averred that he had latterly followed it out. He sat
+cross-legged and silent, a finger to his temple.
+
+"One gets so addle-pated thinkin' many things," said Mrs. Berry,
+simply. "That's why we see wonder clever people goin' wrong--to my
+mind. I think it's al'ays the plan in a dielemmer to pray God and
+walk forward."
+
+The keen-witted soft woman was tracking the baronet's thoughts, and
+she had absolutely run him down and taken an explanation out of his
+mouth, by which Mrs. Berry was to have been informed that he had
+acted from a principle of his own, and devolved a wisdom she could
+not be expected to comprehend.
+
+Of course he became advised immediately that it would be waste of
+time to direct such an explanation to her inferior capacity.
+
+He gave her his hand, saying, "My son has gone out of town to see
+his cousin, who is ill. He will return in two or three days, and
+then they will both come to me at Raynham."
+
+Mrs. Berry took the tips of his fingers, and went half-way to the
+floor perpendicularly. "He pass her like a stranger in the park this
+evenin'," she faltered.
+
+"Ah?" said the baronet. "Yes, well! they will be at Raynham before
+the week is over."
+
+Mrs. Berry was not quite satisfied. "Not of his own accord he pass
+that sweet young wife of his like a stranger this day, Sir Austin!"
+
+"I must beg you not to intrude further, ma'am."
+
+Mrs. Berry bobbed her bunch of a body out of the room.
+
+"All's well as ends well," she said to herself. "It's bad inquirin' too
+close among men. We must take 'em somethin' like Providence--_as_
+they come. Thank heaven! I kep' back the baby."
+
+In Mrs. Berry's eyes the baby was the victorious reserve.
+
+Adrian asked his chief what he thought of that specimen of women.
+
+"I think I have not met a better in my life," said the baronet,
+mingling praise and sarcasm.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Clare lies in her bed as placid as in the days when she breathed;
+her white hands stretched their length along the sheets, at peace
+from head to feet. She needs iron no more. Richard is face to face
+with death for the first time. He sees the sculpture of clay--the
+spark gone.
+
+Clare gave her mother the welcome of the dead. This child would have
+spoken nothing but kind commonplaces had she been alive. She was
+dead, and none knew her malady. On her fourth finger were two
+wedding-rings.
+
+When hours of weeping had silenced the mother's anguish, she, for
+some comfort she saw in it, pointed out that strange thing to
+Richard, speaking low in the chamber of the dead; and then he learnt
+that it was his own lost ring Clare wore in the two worlds. He
+learnt from her husband that Clare's last request had been that
+neither of the rings should be removed. She had written it; she
+would not speak it.
+
+"I beg of my husband, and all kind people who may have the care of
+me between this and the grave, to bury me with my hands untouched."
+
+The tracing of the words showed the bodily torment she was
+suffering, as she wrote them on a scrap of paper found beside her
+pillow.
+
+In wonder, as the dim idea grew from the waving of Clare's dead
+hand, Richard paced the house, and hung about the awful room;
+dreading to enter it, reluctant to quit it. The secret Clare had
+buried while she lived, arose with her death. He saw it play like
+flame across her marble features. The memory of her voice was like a
+knife at his nerves. His coldness to her started up accusingly: her
+meekness was bitter blame.
+
+On the evening of the fourth day, her mother came to him in his
+bedroom, with a face so white that he asked himself if aught worse
+could happen to a mother than the loss of her child. Choking she
+said to him, "Read this," and thrust a leather-bound pocket-book
+trembling in his hand. She would not breathe to him what it was. She
+entreated him not to open it before her.
+
+"Tell me," she said, "tell me what you think. John must not hear of
+it. I have nobody to consult but you--O Richard!"
+
+"MY DIARY" was written in the round hand of Clare's childhood on the
+first page. The first name his eye encountered was his own.
+
+"Richard's fourteenth birthday. I have worked him a purse and put it
+under his pillow, because he is going to have plenty of money. He
+does not notice me now because he has a friend now, and he is ugly,
+but Richard is not, and never will be."
+
+The occurrences of that day were subsequently recorded, and a
+childish prayer to God for him set down. Step by step he saw her
+growing mind in his history. As she advanced in years she began to
+look back, and made much of little trivial remembrances, all bearing
+upon him.
+
+"We went into the fields and gathered cowslips together, and pelted
+each other, and I told him he used to call them 'coals-sleeps' when
+he was a baby, and he was angry at my telling him, for he does not
+like to be told he was ever a baby."
+
+He remembered the incident, and remembered his stupid scorn of her
+meek affection. Little Clare! how she lived before him in her white
+dress and pink ribbons, and soft dark eyes! Upstairs she was lying
+dead. He read on:
+
+"Mama says there is no one in the world like Richard, and I am sure
+there is not, not in the whole world. He says he is going to be a
+great General and going to the wars. If he does I shall dress myself
+as a boy and go after him, and he will not know me till I am
+wounded. Oh I pray he will never, never be wounded. I wonder what I
+should feel if Richard was ever to die."
+
+Upstairs Clare was lying dead.
+
+"Lady Blandish said there was a likeness between Richard and me.
+Richard said I hope I do not hang down my head as she does. He is
+angry with me because I do not look people in the face and speak
+out, but I know I am not looking after earthworms."
+
+Yes. He had told her that. A shiver seized him at the recollection.
+
+Then it came to a period when the words: "Richard kissed me," stood
+by themselves, and marked a day in her life.
+
+Afterwards it was solemnly discovered that Richard wrote poetry. He
+read one of his old forgotten compositions penned when he had that
+ambition.
+
+    "Thy truth to me is truer
+      Than horse, or dog, or blade;
+    Thy vows to me are fewer
+      Than ever maiden made.
+
+    Thou steppest from thy splendour
+      To make my life a song:
+    My bosom shall be tender
+      As thine has risen strong."
+
+All the verses were transcribed. "It is he who is the humble
+knight," Clare explained at the close, "and his lady is a Queen. Any
+Queen would throw her crown away for him."
+
+It came to that period when Clare left Raynham with her mother.
+
+"Richard was not sorry to lose me. He only loves boys and men.
+Something tells me I shall never see Raynham again. He was dressed
+in blue. He said Good-bye, Clare, and kissed me on the cheek.
+Richard never kisses me on the mouth. He did not know I went to his
+bed and kissed him while he was asleep. He sleeps with one arm
+under his head, and the other out on the bed. I moved away a bit of
+his hair that was over his eyes. I wanted to cut it. I have one
+piece. I do not let anybody see I am unhappy, not even mama. She
+says I want iron. I am sure I do not. I like to write my name. Clare
+Doria Forey. Richard's is Richard Doria Feverel."
+
+His breast rose convulsively. Clare Doria Forey! He knew the music
+of that name. He had heard it somewhere. It sounded faint and mellow
+now behind the hills of death.
+
+He could not read for tears. It was midnight. The hour seemed to
+belong to her. The awful stillness and the darkness were Clare's.
+Clare's voice clear and cold from the grave possessed it.
+
+Painfully, with blinded eyes, he looked over the breathless pages.
+She spoke of his marriage, and her finding the ring.
+
+"I knew it was his. I knew he was going to be married that morning.
+I saw him stand by the altar when they laughed at breakfast. His
+wife must be so beautiful! Richard's wife! Perhaps he will love me
+better now he is married. Mama says they must be separated. That is
+shameful. If I can help him I will. I pray so that he may be happy.
+I hope God hears poor sinners' prayers. I am very sinful. Nobody
+knows it as I do. They say I am good, but I know. When I look on the
+ground I am not looking after earthworms, as he said. Oh, do forgive
+me, God!"
+
+Then she spoke of her own marriage, and that it was her duty to obey
+her mother. A blank in the Diary ensued.
+
+"I have seen Richard. Richard despises me," was the next entry.
+
+But now as he read his eyes were fixed, and the delicate feminine
+handwriting like a black thread drew on his soul to one terrible
+conclusion.
+
+"I cannot live. Richard despises me. I cannot bear the touch of my
+fingers or the sight of my face. Oh! I understand him now. He should
+not have kissed me so that last time. I wished to die while his
+mouth was on mine."
+
+Further: "I have no escape. Richard said he would die rather than
+endure it. I know he would. Why should I be afraid to do what he
+would do? I think if my husband whipped me I could bear it better.
+He is so kind, and tries to make me cheerful. He will soon be very
+unhappy. I pray to God half the night. I seem to be losing sight of
+my God the more I pray."
+
+Richard laid the book open on the table. Phantom surges seemed to be
+mounting and travelling for his brain. Had Clare taken his wild
+words in earnest? Did she lie there dead--he shrouded the thought.
+
+He wrapped the thoughts in shrouds, but he was again reading.
+
+"A quarter to one o'clock. I shall not be alive this time to-morrow.
+I shall never see Richard now. I dreamed last night we were in the
+fields together, and he walked with his arm round my waist. We were
+children, but I thought we were married, and I showed him I wore his
+ring, and he said--if you always wear it, Clare, you are as good as
+my wife. Then I made a vow to wear it for ever and ever.... It is
+not mama's fault. She does not think as Richard and I do of these
+things. He is not a coward, nor am I. He hates cowards.
+
+"I have written to his father to make him happy. Perhaps when I am
+dead he will hear what I say.
+
+"I heard just now Richard call distinctly--Clari, come out to me.
+Surely he has not gone. I am going I know not where. I cannot think.
+I am very cold."
+
+The words were written larger, and staggered towards the close, as
+if her hand had lost mastery over the pen.
+
+"I can only remember Richard now a boy. A little boy and a big boy.
+I am not sure now of his voice. I can only remember certain words.
+'Clari,' and 'Don Ricardo,' and his laugh. He used to be full of
+fun. Once we laughed all day together tumbling in the hay. Then he
+had a friend and began to write poetry, and be proud. If I had
+married a young man he would have forgiven me, but I should not have
+been happier. I must have died. God never looks on me.
+
+"It is past two o'clock. The sheep are bleating outside. It must be
+very cold in the ground. Good-bye, Richard."
+
+With his name it began and ended. Even to herself Clare was not
+over-communicative. The book was slender, yet her nineteen years of
+existence left half the number of pages white.
+
+Those last words drew him irresistibly to gaze on her. There she
+lay, the same impassive Clare. For a moment he wondered she had not
+moved--to him she had become so different. She who had just filled
+his ears with strange tidings--it was not possible to think her
+dead! She seemed to have been speaking to him all through his life.
+His image was on that still heart.
+
+He dismissed the night-watchers from the room, and remained with her
+alone, till the sense of death oppressed him, and then the shock
+sent him to the window to look for sky and stars. Behind a low broad
+pine, hung with frosty mist, he heard a bell-wether of the flock in
+the silent fold. Death in life it sounded.
+
+The mother found him praying at the foot of Clare's bed. She knelt
+by his side, and they prayed, and their joint sobs shook their
+bodies, but neither of them shed many tears. They held a dark
+unspoken secret in common. They prayed God to forgive her.
+
+Clare was buried in the family vault of the Todhunters. Her mother
+breathed no wish to have her lying at Lobourne.
+
+After the funeral, what they alone upon earth knew brought them
+together.
+
+"Richard," she said, "the worst is over for me. I have no one to
+love but you, dear. We have all been fighting against God, and
+this.... Richard! you will come with me, and be united to your wife,
+and spare my brother what I suffer."
+
+He answered the broken spirit: "I have killed one. She sees me as I
+am. I cannot go with you to my wife, because I am not worthy to
+touch her hand, and were I to go, I should do _this_ to silence my
+self-contempt. Go you to her, and when she asks of me, say I have a
+death upon my head that----No! say that I am abroad, seeking for
+that which shall cleanse me. If I find it I shall come to claim her.
+If not, God help us all!"
+
+She had no strength to contest his solemn words, or stay him, and he
+went forth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+AUSTIN RETURNS
+
+
+A man with a beard saluted the wise youth Adrian in the full blaze
+of Piccadilly with a clap on the shoulder. Adrian glanced leisurely
+behind.
+
+"Do you want to try my nerves, my dear fellow? I'm not a man of
+fashion, happily, or you would have struck the seat of them. How are
+you?"
+
+That was his welcome to Austin Wentworth after his long absence.
+
+Austin took his arm, and asked for news, with the hunger of one who
+had been in the wilderness five years.
+
+"The Whigs have given up the ghost, my dear Austin. The free Briton
+is to receive Liberty's pearl, the Ballot. The Aristocracy has had a
+cycle's notice to quit. The Monarchy and old Madeira are going out;
+Demos and Cape wines are coming in. They call it Reform. So, you
+see, your absence has worked wonders. Depart for another five years,
+and you will return to ruined stomachs, cracked sconces, general
+upset, an equality made perfect by universal prostration."
+
+Austin indulged him in a laugh. "I want to hear about ourselves. How
+is old Ricky?"
+
+"You know of his--what do they call it when greenhorns are licenced
+to jump into the milkpails of dairymaids?--a very charming little
+woman she makes, by the way--presentable! quite old Anacreon's rose
+in milk. Well! everybody thought the System must die of it. Not a
+bit. It continued to flourish in spite. It's in a consumption now,
+though--emaciated, lean, raw, spectral! I've this morning escaped
+from Raynham to avoid the sight of it. I have brought our genial
+uncle Hippias to town--a delightful companion! I said to him: 'We've
+had a fine Spring.' 'Ugh!' he answers, 'there's a time when you come
+to think the Spring old.' You should have heard how he trained out
+the 'old.' I felt something like decay in my sap just to hear him.
+In the prize-fight of life, my dear Austin, our uncle Hippias has
+been unfairly hit below the belt. Let's guard ourselves there, and
+go and order dinner."
+
+"But where's Ricky now, and what is he doing?" said Austin.
+
+"Ask what he has done. The miraculous boy has gone and got a baby!"
+
+"A child? Richard has one?" Austin's clear eyes shone with pleasure.
+
+"I suppose it's not common among your tropical savages. He has one:
+one as big as two. That has been the death-blow to the System. It
+bore the marriage--the baby was too much for it. Could it swallow
+the baby, 'twould live. She, the wonderful woman, has produced a
+large boy. I assure you it's quite amusing to see the System opening
+its mouth every hour of the day, trying to gulp him down, aware that
+it would be a consummate cure, or happy release."
+
+By degrees Austin learnt the baronet's proceedings, and smiled
+sadly.
+
+"How has Ricky turned out?" he asked. "What sort of a character has
+he?"
+
+"The poor boy is ruined by his excessive anxiety about it.
+Character? he has the character of a bullet with a treble charge of
+powder behind it. Enthusiasm is the powder. That boy could get up an
+enthusiasm for the maiden days of Ops! He was going to reform the
+world, after your fashion, Austin,--you have something to answer
+for. Unfortunately he began with the feminine side of it. Cupid
+proud of Phoebus newly slain, or Pluto wishing to people his
+kingdom, if you like, put it into the soft head of one of the
+guileless grateful creatures to kiss him for his good work. Oh,
+horror! he never expected that. Conceive the System in the flesh,
+and you have our Richard. The consequence is, that this male Peri
+refuses to enter his Paradise, though the gates are open for him,
+the trumpets blow, and the fair unspotted one awaits him fruitful
+within. We heard of him last that he was trying the German
+waters--preparatory to his undertaking the release of Italy from the
+subjugation of the Teuton. Let's hope they'll wash him. He is in the
+company of Lady Judith Felle--your old friend, the ardent female
+Radical who married the decrepit lord to carry out her principles.
+They always marry English lords, or foreign princes. I admire their
+tactics."
+
+"Judith is bad for him in such a state. I like her, but she was
+always too sentimental," said Austin.
+
+"Sentiment made her marry the old lord, I suppose? I like her _for_
+her sentiment, Austin. Sentimental people are sure to live long and
+die fat. Feeling, that's the slayer, coz. Sentiment! 'tis the
+cajolery of existence: the soft bloom which whoso weareth, he or she
+is enviable. Would that I had more!"
+
+"You're not much changed, Adrian."
+
+"I'm not a Radical, Austin."
+
+Further inquiries, responded to in Adrian's figurative speech,
+instructed Austin that the baronet was waiting for his son, in a
+posture of statuesque offended paternity, before he would receive
+his daughter-in-law and grandson. That was what Adrian meant by the
+efforts of the System to swallow the baby.
+
+"We're in a tangle," said the wise youth. "Time will extricate us, I
+presume, or what is the venerable signor good for?"
+
+Austin mused some minutes, and asked for Lucy's place of residence.
+
+"We'll go to her by and by," said Adrian.
+
+"I shall go and see her now," said Austin.
+
+"Well, we'll go and order the dinner first, coz."
+
+"Give me her address."
+
+"Really, Austin, you carry matters with too long a beard," Adrian
+objected. "Don't you care what you eat?" he roared hoarsely, looking
+humorously hurt. "I daresay not. A slice out of him that's
+handy--sauce du ciel! Go, batten on the baby, cannibal. Dinner at
+seven."
+
+Adrian gave him his own address, and Lucy's, and strolled off to do
+the better thing.
+
+Overnight Mrs. Berry had observed a long stranger in her tea-cup.
+Posting him on her fingers and starting him with a smack, he had
+vaulted lightly and thereby indicated that he was positively coming
+the next day. She forgot him in the bustle of her duties and the
+absorption of her faculties in thoughts of the incomparable stranger
+Lucy had presented to the world, till a knock at the street-door
+reminded her. "There he is!" she cried, as she ran to open to him.
+"There's my stranger come!" Never was a woman's faith in omens so
+justified. The stranger desired to see Mrs. Richard Feverel. He
+said his name was Mr. Austin Wentworth. Mrs. Berry clasped her
+hands, exclaiming, "Come at last!" and ran bolt out of the house to
+look up and down the street. Presently she returned with many
+excuses for her rudeness, saying: "I expected to see her comin'
+home, Mr. Wentworth. Every day twice a day she go out to give her
+blessed angel an airing. No leavin' the child with nursemaids for
+her! She _is_ a mother! and good milk, too, thank the Lord! though
+her heart's so low."
+
+Indoors Mrs. Berry stated who she was, related the history of the
+young couple, and her participation in it, and admired the beard.
+"Though I'd swear you don't wear it for ornament, now!" she said,
+having in the first impulse designed a stroke at man's vanity.
+
+Ultimately Mrs. Berry spoke of the family complication, and with
+dejected head and joined hands threw out dark hints about Richard.
+
+While Austin was giving his cheerfuller views of the case, Lucy came
+in, preceding the baby.
+
+"I am Austin Wentworth," he said, taking her hand. They read each
+other's faces, these two, and smiled kinship.
+
+"Your name is Lucy?"
+
+She affirmed it softly.
+
+"And mine is Austin, as you know."
+
+Mrs. Berry allowed time for Lucy's charms to subdue him, and
+presented Richard's representative, who, seeing a new face, suffered
+himself to be contemplated before he commenced crying aloud and
+knocking at the doors of Nature for something that was due to him.
+
+"Ain't he a lusty darlin'?" says Mrs. Berry. "Ain't he like his own
+father? There can't be no doubt about zoo, zoo pitty pet. Look at
+his fists. Ain't he got passion? Ain't he a splendid roarer? Oh!"
+and she went off rapturously into baby-language.
+
+A fine boy, certainly. Mrs. Berry exhibited his legs for further
+proof, desiring Austin's confirmation as to their being dumplings.
+
+Lucy murmured a word of excuse, and bore the splendid roarer out of
+the room.
+
+"She might a done it here," said Mrs. Berry. "There's no prettier
+sight, I say. If her dear husband could but see that! He's off in
+his heroics--he want to be doin' all sort o' things: I say he'll
+never do anything grander than that baby. You should 'a seen her
+uncle over that baby--he came here, for I said, you _shall_ see your
+own fam'ly, my dear, and so she thinks. He come, and he laughed over
+the baby in the joy of his heart, poor man! he cried, he did. You
+should see that Mr. Thompson, Mr. Wentworth--a friend o' Mr.
+Richard's, and a very modest-minded young gentleman--he worships her
+in his innocence. It's a sight to see him with that baby. My belief
+is he's unhappy 'cause he can't anyways be nurse-maid to him. O Mr.
+Wentworth! what _do_ you think of her, sir?"
+
+Austin's reply was as satisfactory as a man's poor speech could make
+it. He heard that Lady Feverel was in the house, and Mrs. Berry
+prepared the way for him to pay his respects to her. Then Mrs. Berry
+ran to Lucy, and the house buzzed with new life. The simple
+creatures felt in Austin's presence something good among them. "He
+don't speak much," said Mrs. Berry, "but I see by his eye he mean a
+deal. He ain't one o' yer long-word gentry, who's all gay deceivers,
+every one of 'em."
+
+Lucy pressed the hearty suckling into her breast. "I wonder what he
+thinks of me, Mrs. Berry? I could not speak to him. I loved him
+before I saw him. I knew what his face was like."
+
+"He looks proper even with a beard, and that's a trial for a
+virtuous man," said Mrs. Berry. "One sees straight _through_ the
+hair with him. Think! he'll think what any _man_'d think--you
+a-suckin' spite o' all your sorrow, my sweet,--and my Berry talkin'
+of his Roman matrons!--here's a English wife'll match 'em all!
+that's what he thinks. And now that leetle dark under yer eye'll
+clear, my darlin', now he've come."
+
+Mrs. Berry looked to no more than that; Lucy to no more than the
+peace she had in being near Richard's best friend. When she sat down
+to tea it was with a sense that the little room that held her was
+her home perhaps for many a day.
+
+A chop procured and cooked by Mrs. Berry formed Austin's dinner.
+During the meal he entertained them with anecdotes of his travels.
+Poor Lucy had no temptation to try to conquer Austin. That heroic
+weakness of hers was gone.
+
+Mrs. Berry had said: "Three cups--I goes no further," and Lucy had
+rejected the proffer of more tea, when Austin, who was in the thick
+of a Brazilian forest, asked her if she was a good traveller.
+
+"I mean, can you start at a minute's notice?"
+
+Lucy hesitated, and then said, "Yes," decisively, to which Mrs.
+Berry added, that she was not a "luggage-woman."
+
+"There used to be a train at seven o'clock," Austin remarked,
+consulting his watch.
+
+The two women were silent.
+
+"Could you get ready to come with me to Raynham in ten minutes?"
+
+Austin looked as if he had asked a commonplace question.
+
+Lucy's lips parted to speak. She could not answer.
+
+Loud rattled the teaboard to Mrs. Berry's dropping hands.
+
+"Joy and deliverance!" she exclaimed with a foundering voice.
+
+"Will you come?" Austin kindly asked again.
+
+Lucy tried to stop her beating heart, as she answered, "Yes." Mrs.
+Berry cunningly pretended to interpret the irresolution in her tones
+with a mighty whisper: "She's thinking what's to be done with baby."
+
+"He must learn to travel," said Austin.
+
+"Oh!" cried Mrs. Berry, "and I'll be his nuss, and bear him, a
+sweet! Oh! and think of it! me nurse-maid once more at Raynham
+Abbey! but it's nurse-woman now, you must say. Let us be goin' on
+the spot."
+
+She started up and away in hot haste, fearing delay would cool the
+heaven-sent resolve. Austin smiled, eying his watch and Lucy
+alternately. She was wishing to ask a multitude of questions. His
+face reassured her, and saying: "I will be dressed instantly," she
+also left the room. Talking, bustling, preparing, wrapping up my
+lord, and looking to their neatnesses, they were nevertheless ready
+within the time prescribed by Austin, and Mrs. Berry stood humming
+over the baby. "He'll sleep it through," she said. "He's had enough
+for an alderman, and goes to sleep sound after his dinner, he do, a
+duck!" Before they departed, Lucy ran up to Lady Feverel. She
+returned for the small one.
+
+"One moment, Mr. Wentworth!"
+
+"Just two," said Austin.
+
+Master Richard was taken up, and when Lucy came back her eyes were
+full of tears.
+
+"She thinks she is never to see him again, Mr. Wentworth."
+
+"She shall," Austin said simply.
+
+Off they went, and with Austin near her, Lucy forgot to dwell at all
+upon the great act of courage she was performing.
+
+"I do hope baby will not wake," was her chief solicitude.
+
+"He!" cries nurse-woman Berry from the rear, "his little tum-tum's
+_as_ tight _as_ he can hold, a pet! a lamb! a bird! a beauty! and ye
+may take yer oath he never wakes till that's slack. He've got
+character of his own, a blessed!"
+
+There are some tremendous citadels that only want to be taken by
+storm. The baronet sat alone in his library, sick of resistance, and
+rejoicing in the pride of no surrender; a terror to his friends and
+to himself. Hearing Austin's name sonorously pronounced by the man
+of calves, he looked up from his book, and held out his hand. "Glad
+to see you, Austin." His appearance betokened complete security. The
+next minute he found himself escaladed.
+
+It was a cry from Mrs. Berry that told him others were in the room
+besides Austin. Lucy stood a little behind the lamp; Mrs. Berry
+close to the door. The door was half open, and passing through it
+might be seen the petrified figure of a fine man. The baronet
+glancing over the lamp rose at Mrs. Berry's signification of a
+woman's personality. Austin stepped back and led Lucy to him by the
+hand. "I have brought Richard's wife, sir," he said with a pleased,
+perfectly uncalculating, countenance, that was disarming. Very pale
+and trembling Lucy bowed. She felt her two hands taken, and heard a
+kind voice. Could it be possible it belonged to the dreadful father
+of her husband? She lifted her eyes nervously: her hands were still
+detained. The baronet contemplated Richard's choice. Had he ever had
+a rivalry with those pure eyes? He saw the pain of her position
+shooting across her brows, and, uttering gentle inquiries as to her
+health, placed her in a seat. Mrs. Berry had already fallen into a
+chair.
+
+"What aspect do you like for your bedroom?--East?" said the baronet.
+
+Lucy was asking herself wonderingly: "Am I to stay?"
+
+"Perhaps you had better take to Richard's room at once," he pursued.
+"You have the Lobourne valley there and a good morning air, and will
+feel more at home."
+
+Lucy's colour mounted. Mrs. Berry gave a short cough, as one who
+should say, "The day is ours!" Undoubtedly--strange as it was to
+think it--the fortress was carried.
+
+"Lucy is rather tired," said Austin, and to hear her Christian name
+thus bravely spoken brought grateful dew to her eyes.
+
+The baronet was about to touch the bell. "But have you come alone?"
+he asked.
+
+At this Mrs. Berry came forward. Not immediately: it seemed to
+require effort for her to move, and when she was within the region
+of the lamp, her agitation could not escape notice. The blissful
+bundle shook in her arms.
+
+"By the way, what is he to me?" Austin inquired generally as he went
+and unveiled the younger hope of Raynham. "My relationship is not so
+defined as yours, sir."
+
+An observer might have supposed that the baronet peeped at his
+grandson with the courteous indifference of one who merely wished to
+compliment the mother of anybody's child.
+
+"I really think he's like Richard," Austin laughed. Lucy looked: I
+am sure he is!
+
+"As like as one to one," Mrs. Berry murmured feebly; but Grandpapa
+not speaking she thought it incumbent on her to pluck up. "And he's
+as healthy as his father was, Sir Austin--spite o' the might 'a
+beens. Reg'lar as the clock! We never want a clock since he come. We
+knows the hour o' the day, and _of_ the night."
+
+"You nurse him yourself, of course?" the baronet spoke to Lucy, and
+was satisfied on that point.
+
+Mrs. Berry was going to display his prodigious legs. Lucy, fearing
+the consequent effect on the prodigious lungs, begged her not to
+wake him. "'T'd take a deal to do that," said Mrs. Berry, and
+harped on Master Richard's health and the small wonder it was that
+he enjoyed it, considering the superior quality of his diet, and the
+lavish attentions of his mother, and then suddenly fell silent on a
+deep sigh.
+
+"He looks healthy," said the baronet, "but I am not a judge of
+babies."
+
+Thus, having capitulated, Raynham chose to acknowledge its new
+commandant, who was now borne away, under the directions of the
+housekeeper, to occupy the room Richard had slept in when an infant.
+
+Austin cast no thought on his success. The baronet said: "She is
+extremely well-looking." He replied: "A person you take to at once."
+There it ended.
+
+But a much more animated colloquy was taking place aloft, where Lucy
+and Mrs. Berry sat alone. Lucy expected her to talk about the
+reception they had met with, and the house, and the peculiarities of
+the rooms, and the solid happiness that seemed in store. Mrs. Berry
+all the while would persist in consulting the looking-glass. Her
+first distinct answer was, "My dear! tell me candid, how do I look?"
+
+"Very nice indeed, Mrs. Berry; but could you have believed he would
+be so kind, so considerate?"
+
+"I am sure I looked a frump," returned Mrs. Berry. "Oh dear! two
+birds at a shot. What _do_ you think, now?"
+
+"I never saw so wonderful a likeness," says Lucy.
+
+"Likeness! look at me." Mrs. Berry was trembling and hot in the
+palms.
+
+"You're very feverish, dear Berry. What can it be?"
+
+"Ain't it like the love-flutters of a young gal, my dear."
+
+"Go to bed, Berry, dear," says Lucy, pouting in her soft caressing
+way. "I will undress you, and see to you, dear heart! You've had so
+much excitement."
+
+"Ha! ha!" Berry laughed hysterically; "she thinks it's about this
+business of hers. Why, it's child's-play, my darlin'. But I didn't
+look for tragedy, to-night. Sleep in this house I can't, my love!"
+
+Lucy was astonished. "Not sleep here, Mrs. Berry?--Oh! why, you
+silly old thing? I know."
+
+"Do ye!" said Mrs. Berry, with a sceptical nose.
+
+"You're afraid of ghosts."
+
+"Belike I am when they're six foot two in their shoes, and bellows
+when you stick a pin into their calves. I seen my Berry!"
+
+"Your husband?"
+
+"Large as life!"
+
+Lucy meditated on optical delusions, but Mrs. Berry described him as
+the Colossus who had marched them into the library, and vowed that
+he had recognized her and quaked. "Time ain't aged him," said Mrs.
+Berry, "whereas me! he've got his excuse now. I _know_ I look a
+frump."
+
+Lucy kissed her: "You look the nicest, dearest old thing."
+
+"You may say an old thing, my dear."
+
+"And your husband is really here?"
+
+"Berry's below!"
+
+Profoundly uttered as this was, it chased every vestige of
+incredulity.
+
+"What will you do, Mrs. Berry?"
+
+"Go, my dear. Leave him to be happy in his own way. It's over atween
+us, I see that. When I entered the house I felt there was something
+comin' over me, and lo and behold ye! no sooner was we in the
+hall-passage--if it hadn't been for that blessed infant I should 'a
+dropped. I must 'a known his step, for my heart began thumpin', and
+I knew I hadn't got my hair straight--that Mr. Wentworth was in such
+a hurry--nor my best gown. I knew he'd scorn me. He hates frumps."
+
+"Scorn you!" cried Lucy, angrily. "He who has behaved so wickedly!"
+
+Mrs. Berry attempted to rise. "I may as well go at once," she
+whimpered. "If I see him I shall only be disgracin' of myself. I
+feel it all on my side already. Did ye mark him, my dear? I know I
+was vexin' to him at times, I was. Those big men are se touchy about
+their dignity--nat'ral. Hark at me! I'm goin' all soft in a minute.
+Let me leave the house, my dear. I daresay it was good half my
+fault. Young women don't understand men sufficient--not
+altogether--and I was a young woman then; and then what they goes
+and does they ain't quite answerable for: they feel, I daresay,
+pushed from behind. Yes. I'll go. I'm a frump. I'll go. 'Tain't in
+natur' for me to sleep in the same house."
+
+Lucy laid her hands on Mrs. Berry's shoulders, and forcibly fixed
+her in her seat. "Leave baby, naughty woman? I tell you he shall
+come to you, and fall on his knees to you and beg your forgiveness."
+
+"Berry on his knees!"
+
+"Yes. And he shall beg and pray you to forgive him."
+
+"If you get more from Martin Berry than breath-away words, great'll
+be my wonder!" said Mrs. Berry.
+
+"We will see," said Lucy, thoroughly determined to do something for
+the good creature that had befriended her.
+
+Mrs. Berry examined her gown. "Won't it seem we're runnin' after
+him?" she murmured faintly.
+
+"He is your husband, Mrs. Berry. He may be wanting to come to you
+now."
+
+"Oh! Where is all I was goin' to say to that man when we met!" Mrs.
+Berry ejaculated. Lucy had left the room.
+
+On the landing outside the door Lucy met a lady dressed in black,
+who stopped her and asked if she was Richard's wife, and kissed her,
+passing from her immediately. Lucy despatched a message for Austin,
+and related the Berry history. Austin sent for the great man, and
+said: "Do you know your wife is here?" Before Berry had time to draw
+himself up to enunciate his longest, he was requested to step
+upstairs, and as his young mistress at once led the way, Berry could
+not refuse to put his legs in motion and carry the stately edifice
+aloft.
+
+Of the interview Mrs. Berry gave Lucy a slight sketch that night.
+"He began in the old way, my dear, and says I, a true heart and
+plain words, Martin Berry. So there he cuts himself and his Johnson
+short, and down he goes--down _on_ his knees. I never could 'a
+believed it. I kep my dignity as a woman till I see that sight, but
+that done for me. I was a ripe apple in his arms 'fore I knew where
+I was. There's something about a fine man on his knees that's too
+much for us women. And it reely was the penitent on his two knees,
+not the lover on his one. If he mean it! But ah! what do you think
+he begs of me, my dear?--not to make it known in the house just yet!
+I can't, I can't say that look well."
+
+Lucy attributed it to his sense of shame at his conduct, and Mrs.
+Berry did her best to look on it in that light.
+
+"Did the bar'net kiss ye when you wished him good-night?" she
+asked. Lucy said he had not. "Then bide awake as long as ye can,"
+was Mrs. Berry's rejoinder. "And now let us pray blessings on that
+simple-speaking gentleman who does so much 'cause he says so
+little."
+
+Like many other natural people, Mrs. Berry was only silly where her
+own soft heart was concerned. As she secretly anticipated, the
+baronet came into her room when all was quiet. She saw him go and
+bend over Richard the Second, and remain earnestly watching him. He
+then went to the half-opened door of the room where Lucy slept,
+leaned his ear a moment, knocked gently, and entered. Mrs. Berry
+heard low words interchanging within. She could not catch a
+syllable, yet she would have sworn to the context. "He've called her
+his daughter, promised her happiness, and given a father's kiss to
+her." When Sir Austin passed out she was in a deep sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+NATURE SPEAKS
+
+
+Briareus reddening angrily over the sea--what is that vaporous
+Titan? And Hesper set in his rosy garland--why looks he so
+implacably sweet? It is that one has left that bright home to go
+forth and do cloudy work, and he has got a stain with which he dare
+not return. Far in the West fair Lucy beckons him to come. Ah,
+heaven! if he might! How strong and fierce the temptation is! how
+subtle the sleepless desire! it drugs his reason, his honour. For he
+loves her; she is still the first and only woman to him. Otherwise
+would this black spot be hell to him? otherwise would his limbs be
+chained while her arms are spread open to him. And if he loves her,
+why then what is one fall in the pit, or a thousand? Is not love the
+password to that beckoning bliss? So may we say; but here is one
+whose body has been made a temple to him, and it is desecrated.
+
+A temple, and desecrated! For what is it fit for but for a dance of
+devils? His education has thus wrought him to think.
+
+He can blame nothing but his own baseness. But to feel base and
+accept the bliss that beckons--he has not fallen so low as that.
+
+Ah, happy English home! sweet wife! what mad miserable Wisp of the
+Fancy led him away from you, high in his conceit? Poor wretch! that
+thought to be he of the hundred hands, and war against the absolute
+Gods. Jove whispered a light commission to the Laughing Dame; she
+met him; and how did he shake Olympus? with laughter?
+
+Sure it were better to be Orestes, the Furies howling in his ears,
+than one called to by a heavenly soul from whom he is for ever
+outcast. He has not the oblivion of madness. Clothed in the lights
+of his first passion, robed in the splendour of old skies, she meets
+him everywhere; morning, evening, night, she shines above him;
+waylays him suddenly in forest depths; drops palpably on his heart.
+At moments he forgets; he rushes to embrace her; calls her his
+beloved, and lo, her innocent kiss brings agony of shame to his
+face.
+
+Daily the struggle endured. His father wrote to him, begging him by
+the love he had for him to return. From that hour Richard burnt
+unread all the letters he received. He knew too well how easily he
+could persuade himself: words from without might tempt him and quite
+extinguish the spark of honourable feeling that tortured him, and
+that he clung to in desperate self-vindication.
+
+To arrest young gentlemen on the downward slope is both a dangerous
+and thankless office. It is, nevertheless, one that fair women
+greatly prize, and certain of them professionally follow. Lady
+Judith, as far as her sex would permit, was also of the Titans in
+their battle against the absolute Gods; for which purpose, mark you,
+she had married a lord incapable in all save his acres. Her
+achievements she kept to her own mind: she did not look happy over
+them. She met Richard accidentally in Paris; she saw his state; she
+let him learn that she alone on earth understood him. The
+consequence was that he was forthwith enrolled in her train. It
+soothed him to be near a woman. Did she venture her guess as to the
+cause of his conduct, she blotted it out with a facility women have,
+and cast on it a melancholy hue he was taught to participate in. She
+spoke of sorrows, personal sorrows, such as he might speak of
+his--vaguely, and with self-blame. And she understood him. How the
+dark unfathomed wealth within us gleams to a woman's eye! We are at
+compound interest immediately: so much richer than we knew!--almost
+as rich as we dreamed! But then the instant we are away from her we
+find ourselves bankrupt, beggared. How is that? We do not ask. We
+hurry to her and bask hungrily in her orbs. The eye must be feminine
+to be thus creative: I cannot say why. Lady Judith understood
+Richard, and he feeling infinitely vile, somehow held to her more
+feverishly, as one who dreaded the worst in missing her. The spirit
+must rest; he was weak with what he suffered.
+
+Austin found them among the hills of Nassau in Rhineland: Titans,
+male and female, who had not displaced Jove, and were now adrift,
+prone on floods of sentiment. The blue-frocked peasant swinging
+behind his oxen of a morning, the gaily-kerchiefed fruit-woman, the
+jackass-driver, even the doctor of those regions, have done more for
+their fellows. Horrible reflection! Lady Judith is serene above it,
+but it frets at Richard when he is out of her shadow. Often
+wretchedly he watches the young men of his own age trooping to their
+work. Not cloud-work theirs! Work solid, unambitious, fruitful!
+
+Lady Judith had a nobler in prospect for the hero. He gaped
+blindfolded for anything, and she gave him the map of Europe in
+tatters. He swallowed it comfortably. It was an intoxicating
+cordial. Himself on horseback over-riding wrecks of Empires! Well
+might common sense cower with the meaner animals at the picture.
+Tacitly they agreed to recast the civilized globe. The quality of
+vapour is to melt and shape itself anew; but it is never the quality
+of vapour to reassume the same shapes. Briareus of the hundred
+unoccupied hands may turn to a monstrous donkey with his hind legs
+aloft, or twenty thousand jabbering apes. The phantasmic groupings
+of the young brain are very like those we see in the skies, and
+equally the sport of the wind. Lady Judith blew. There was plenty of
+vapour in him, and it always resolved into some shape or other. You
+that mark those clouds of eventide, and know youth, will see the
+similitude: it will not be strange, it will barely seem foolish to
+you, that a young man of Richard's age, Richard's education and
+position, should be in this wild state. Had he not been nursed to
+believe he was born for great things? Did she not say she was sure
+of it? And to feel base, yet born for better, is enough to make one
+grasp at anything cloudy. Suppose the hero with a game leg. How
+intense is his faith in quacks! with what a passion of longing is he
+not seized to break somebody's head! They spoke of Italy in low
+voices. "The time will come," said she. "And I shall be ready," said
+he. What rank was he to take in the liberating army? Captain,
+colonel, general in chief, or simple private? Here, as became him,
+he was much more positive and specific than she was. Simple private,
+he said. Yet he saw himself caracoling on horseback. Private in the
+cavalry, then, of course. Private in the cavalry over-riding wrecks
+of Empires. She looked forth under her brows with mournful
+indistinctness at that object in the distance. They read Petrarch to
+get up the necessary fires. Italia mia! Vain indeed was this
+speaking to those thick and mortal wounds in her fair body, but
+their sighs went with the Tiber, and Arno, and the Po, and their
+hands joined. Who has not wept for Italy? I see the aspirations of a
+world arise for her, thick and frequent as the puffs of smoke from
+cigars of Pannonian sentries!
+
+So when Austin came Richard said he could not leave Lady Judith,
+Lady Judith said she could not part with him. For his sake, mind!
+This Richard verified. Perhaps he had reason to be grateful. The
+high road of Folly may have led him from one that terminates worse.
+He is foolish, God knows; but for my part I will not laugh at the
+hero because he has not got his occasion. Meet him when he is, as it
+were, anointed by his occasion, and he is no laughing matter.
+
+Richard felt his safety in this which, to please the world, we must
+term folly. Exhalation of vapours was a wholesome process to him,
+and somebody who gave them shape and hue a beneficent Iris. He told
+Austin plainly he could not leave her, and did not anticipate the
+day when he could.
+
+"Why can't you go to your wife, Richard?"
+
+"For a reason you would be the first to approve, Austin."
+
+He welcomed Austin with every show of manly tenderness, and sadness
+at heart. Austin he had always associated with his Lucy in that
+Hesperian palace of the West. Austin waited patiently. Lady Judith's
+old lord played on all the baths in Nassau without evoking the tune
+of health. Whithersoever he listed she changed her abode. So
+admirable a wife was to be pardoned for espousing an old man. She
+was an enthusiast even in her connubial duties. She had the brows of
+an enthusiast. With occasion she might have been a Charlotte Corday.
+So let her also be shielded from the ban of ridicule. Nonsense of
+enthusiasts is very different from nonsense of ninnies. She was
+truly a high-minded person, of that order who always do what they
+see to be right, and always have confidence in their optics. She was
+not unworthy of a young man's admiration, if she was unfit to be his
+guide. She resumed her ancient intimacy with Austin easily, while
+she preserved her new footing with Richard. She and Austin were not
+unlike, only Austin never dreamed, and had not married an old lord.
+
+The three were walking on the bridge at Limburg on the Lahn, where
+the shadow of a stone bishop is thrown by the moonlight on the water
+brawling over slabs of slate. A woman passed them bearing in her
+arms a baby, whose mighty size drew their attention.
+
+"What a wopper!" Richard laughed.
+
+"Well, that is a fine fellow," said Austin, "but I don't think he's
+much bigger than your boy."
+
+"He'll do for a nineteenth-century Arminius," Richard was saying.
+Then he looked at Austin.
+
+"What was that you said?" Lady Judith asked of Austin.
+
+"What have I said that deserves to be repeated?" Austin
+counterqueried quite innocently.
+
+"Richard has a son?"
+
+"You didn't know it?"
+
+"His modesty goes very far," said Lady Judith, sweeping the shadow
+of a curtsey to Richard's paternity.
+
+Richard's heart throbbed with violence. He looked again in Austin's
+face. Austin took it so much as a matter of course that he said
+nothing more on the subject.
+
+"Well!" murmured Lady Judith.
+
+When the two men were alone, Richard said in a quick voice: "Austin!
+you were in earnest?"
+
+"You didn't know it, Richard?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why, they all wrote to you. Lucy wrote to you: your father, your
+aunt. I believe Adrian wrote too."
+
+"I tore up their letters," said Richard.
+
+"He's a noble fellow, I can tell you. You've nothing to be ashamed
+of. He'll soon be coming to ask about you. I made sure you knew."
+
+"No, I never knew." Richard walked away, and then said: "What is he
+like?"
+
+"Well, he really is like you, but he has his mother's eyes."
+
+"And she's----"
+
+"Yes. I think the child has kept her well."
+
+"They're both at Raynham?"
+
+"Both."
+
+Hence fantastic vapours! What are ye to this! Where are the dreams
+of the hero when he learns he has a child? Nature is taking him to
+her bosom. She will speak presently. Every domesticated boor in
+these hills can boast the same, yet marvels the hero at none of his
+visioned prodigies as he does when he comes to hear of this most
+common performance. A father? Richard fixed his eyes as if he were
+trying to make out the lineaments of his child.
+
+Telling Austin he would be back in a few minutes, he sallied into
+the air, and walked on and on. "A father!" he kept repeating to
+himself: "a child!" And though he knew it not, he was striking the
+key-notes of Nature. But he did know of a singular harmony that
+suddenly burst over his whole being.
+
+The moon was surpassingly bright: the summer air heavy and still. He
+left the high road and pierced into the forest. His walk was rapid:
+the leaves on the trees brushed his cheeks; the dead leaves heaped
+in the dells noised to his feet. Something of a religious joy--a
+strange sacred pleasure--was in him. By degrees it wore; he
+remembered himself: and now he was possessed by a proportionate
+anguish. A father! he dared never see his child. And he had no
+longer his phantasies to fall upon. He was utterly bare to his sin.
+In his troubled mind it seemed to him that Clare looked down on
+him--Clare who saw him as he was; and that to her eyes it would be
+infamy for him to go and print his kiss upon his child. Then came
+stern efforts to command his misery and make the nerves of his face
+iron.
+
+By the log of an ancient tree half buried in dead leaves of past
+summers, beside a brook, he halted as one who had reached his
+journey's end. There he discovered he had a companion in Lady
+Judith's little dog. He gave the friendly animal a pat of
+recognition and both were silent in the forest-silence.
+
+It was impossible for Richard to return; his heart was surcharged.
+He must advance, and on he footed, the little dog following.
+
+An oppressive slumber hung about the forest-branches. In the dells
+and on the heights was the same dead heat. Here where the brook
+tinkled it was no cool-lipped sound, but metallic, and without the
+spirit of water. Yonder in a space of moonlight on lush grass, the
+beams were as white fire to sight and feeling. No haze spread
+around. The valleys were clear, defined to the shadows of their
+verges; the distances sharply distinct, and with the colours of day
+but slightly softened. Richard beheld a roe moving across a slope of
+sward far out of rifle-mark. The breathless silence was significant,
+yet the moon shone in a broad blue heaven. Tongue out of mouth
+trotted the little dog after him; couched panting when he stopped an
+instant; rose weariedly when he started afresh. Now and then a large
+white night-moth flitted through the dusk of the forest.
+
+On a barren corner of the wooded highland looking inland stood grey
+topless ruins set in nettles and rank grass-blades. Richard
+mechanically sat down on the crumbling flints to rest, and listened
+to the panting of the dog. Sprinkled at his feet were emerald
+lights: hundreds of glow-worms studded the dark dry ground.
+
+He sat and eyed them, thinking not at all. His energies were
+expended in action. He sat as a part of the ruins, and the moon
+turned his shadow Westward from the South. Overhead, as she
+declined, long ripples of silver cloud were imperceptibly stealing
+toward her. They were the van of a tempest. He did not observe them
+or the leaves beginning to chatter. When he again pursued his course
+with his face to the Rhine, a huge mountain appeared to rise sheer
+over him, and he had it in his mind to scale it. He got no nearer to
+the base of it for all his vigorous outstepping. The ground began to
+dip; he lost sight of the sky. Then heavy thunder-drops struck his
+cheek, the leaves were singing, the earth breathed, it was black
+before him and behind. All at once the thunder spoke. The mountain
+he had marked was bursting over him.
+
+Up started the whole forest in violet fire. He saw the country at
+the foot of the hills to the bounding Rhine gleam, quiver,
+extinguished. Then there were pauses; and the lightning seemed as
+the eye of heaven, and the thunder as the tongue of heaven, each
+alternately addressing him; filling him with awful rapture. Alone
+there--sole human creature among the grandeurs and mysteries of
+storm--he felt the representative of his kind, and his spirits rose,
+and marched, and exulted, let it be glory, let it be ruin! Lower
+down the lightened abysses of air rolled the wrathful crash: then
+white thrusts of light were darted from the sky, and great curving
+ferns, seen steadfast in pallor a second, were supernaturally
+agitated, and vanished. Then a shrill song roused in the leaves and
+the herbage. Prolonged and louder it sounded, as deeper and heavier
+the deluge pressed. A mighty force of water satisfied the desire of
+the earth. Even in this, drenched as he was by the first outpouring,
+Richard had a savage pleasure. Keeping in motion, he was scarcely
+conscious of the wet, and the grateful breath of the weeds was
+refreshing. Suddenly he stopped short, lifting a curious nostril. He
+fancied he smelt meadow-sweet. He had never seen the flower in
+Rhineland--never thought of it; and it would hardly be met with in a
+forest. He was sure he smelt it fresh in dews. His little companion
+wagged a miserable wet tail some way in advance. He went on slowly,
+thinking indistinctly. After two or three steps he stooped and
+stretched out his hand to feel for the flower, having, he knew not
+why, a strong wish to verify its growth there. Groping about, his
+hand encountered something warm that started at his touch, and he,
+with the instinct we have, seized it, and lifted it to look at it.
+The creature was very small, evidently quite young. Richard's eyes,
+now accustomed to the darkness, were able to discern it for what it
+was, a tiny leveret, and he supposed that the dog had probably
+frightened its dam just before he found it. He put the little thing
+on one hand in his breast, and stepped out rapidly as before.
+
+The rain was now steady; from every tree a fountain poured. So cool
+and easy had his mind become that he was speculating on what kind of
+shelter the birds could find, and how the butterflies and moths
+saved their coloured wings from washing. Folded close they might
+hang under a leaf, he thought. Lovingly he looked into the dripping
+darkness of the coverts on each side, as one of their children. He
+was next musing on a strange sensation he experienced. It ran up one
+arm with an indescribable thrill, but communicated nothing to his
+heart. It was purely physical, ceased for a time, and recommenced,
+till he had it all through his blood, wonderfully thrilling. He grew
+aware that the little thing he carried in his breast was licking his
+hand there. The small rough tongue going over and over the palm of
+his hand produced the strange sensation he felt. Now that he knew
+the cause, the marvel ended; but now that he knew the cause, his
+heart was touched and made more of it. The gentle scraping continued
+without intermission as on he walked. What did it say to him? Human
+tongue could not have said so much just then.
+
+A pale grey light on the skirts of the flying tempest displayed the
+dawn. Richard was walking hurriedly. The green drenched weeds lay
+all about in his path, bent thick, and the forest drooped
+glimmeringly. Impelled as a man who feels a revelation mounting
+obscurely to his brain, Richard was passing one of these little
+forest-chapels, hung with votive wreaths, where the peasant halts to
+kneel and pray. Cold, still, in the twilight it stood, rain-drops
+pattering round it. He looked within, and saw the Virgin holding her
+Child. He moved by. But not many steps had he gone ere his strength
+went out of him, and he shuddered. What was it? He asked not. He was
+in other hands. Vivid as lightning the Spirit of Life illumined
+him. He felt in his heart the cry of his child, his darling's touch.
+With shut eyes he saw them both. They drew him from the depths; they
+led him a blind and tottering man. And as they led him he had a
+sense of purification so sweet he shuddered again and again.
+
+When he looked out from his trance on the breathing world, the small
+birds hopped and chirped: warm fresh sunlight was over all the
+hills. He was on the edge of the forest, entering a plain clothed
+with ripe corn under a spacious morning sky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+AGAIN THE MAGIAN CONFLICT
+
+
+They heard at Raynham that Richard was coming. Lucy had the news
+first in a letter from Ripton Thompson, who met him at Bonn. Ripton
+did not say that he had employed his vacation holiday on purpose to
+use his efforts to induce his dear friend to return to his wife; and
+finding Richard already on his way, of course Ripton said nothing to
+him, but affected to be travelling for his pleasure like any
+cockney. Richard also wrote to her. In case she should have gone to
+the sea he directed her to send word to his hotel that he might not
+lose an hour. His letter was sedate in tone, very sweet to her.
+Assisted by the faithful female Berry, she was conquering an
+Aphorist.
+
+"Woman's reason is in the milk of her breasts," was one of his rough
+notes, due to an observation of Lucy's maternal cares. Let us
+remember, therefore, we men who have drunk of it largely there, that
+she has it.
+
+Mrs. Berry zealously apprised him how early Master Richard's
+education had commenced, and the great future historian he must
+consequently be. This trait in Lucy was of itself sufficient to win
+Sir Austin.
+
+"Here my plan with Richard was false," he reflected: "in presuming
+that anything save blind fortuity would bring him such a mate as he
+should have." He came to add: "And has got!"
+
+He could admit now that instinct had so far beaten science; for as
+Richard was coming, as all were to be happy, his wisdom embraced
+them all paternally as the author of their happiness. Between him
+and Lucy a tender intimacy grew.
+
+"I told you she could talk, sir," said Adrian.
+
+"She thinks!" said the baronet.
+
+The delicate question how she was to treat her uncle, he settled
+generously. Farmer Blaize should come up to Raynham when he would:
+Lucy must visit him at least three times a week. He had Farmer
+Blaize and Mrs. Berry to study, and really excellent Aphorisms
+sprang from the plain human bases this natural couple presented.
+
+"It will do us no harm," he thought, "some of the honest blood of
+the soil in our veins." And he was content in musing on the
+parentage of the little cradled boy. A common sight for those who
+had the entry to the library was the baronet cherishing the hand of
+his daughter-in-law.
+
+So Richard was crossing the sea, and hearts at Raynham were beating
+quicker measures as the minutes progressed. That night he would be
+with them. Sir Austin gave Lucy a longer, warmer salute when she
+came down to breakfast in the morning. Mrs. Berry waxed thrice
+amorous. "It's your second bridals, ye sweet livin' widow!" she
+said. "Thanks be the Lord! it's the same man too! and a baby over
+the bed-post," she appended seriously.
+
+"Strange," Berry declared it to be, "strange I feel none o' this to
+my Berry now. All my feelin's o' love seem t'ave gone into you two
+sweet chicks."
+
+In fact, the faithless male Berry complained of being treated badly,
+and affected a superb jealousy of the baby; but the good dame told
+him that if he suffered at all he suffered his due. Berry's position
+was decidedly uncomfortable. It could not be concealed from the
+lower household that he had a wife in the establishment, and for the
+complications this gave rise to, his wife would not legitimately
+console him. Lucy did intercede, but Mrs. Berry was obdurate. She
+averred she would not give up the child till he was weaned. "Then,
+perhaps," she said prospectively. "You see I ain't so soft as you
+thought for."
+
+"You're a very unkind, vindictive old woman," said Lucy.
+
+"Belike I am," Mrs. Berry was proud to agree. We like a new
+character, now and then. Berry had delayed too long.
+
+Were it not notorious that the straightlaced prudish dare not listen
+to the natural chaste, certain things Mrs. Berry thought it
+advisable to impart to the young wife with regard to Berry's
+infidelity, and the charity women should have towards sinful men,
+might here be reproduced. Enough that she thought proper to broach
+the matter, and cite her own Christian sentiments, now that she was
+indifferent in some degree.
+
+Oily calm is on the sea. At Raynham they look up at the sky and
+speculate that Richard is approaching fairly speeded. He comes to
+throw himself on his darling's mercy. Lucy irradiated over forest
+and sea, tempest and peace--to her the hero comes humbly. Great is
+that day when we see our folly! Ripton and he were the friends of
+old. Richard encouraged him to talk of the two he could be eloquent
+on, and Ripton, whose secret vanity was in his powers of speech,
+never tired of enumerating Lucy's virtues, and the peculiar
+attributes of the baby.
+
+"She did not say a word against me, Rip?"
+
+"Against you, Richard! The moment she knew she was to be a mother,
+she thought of nothing but her duty to the child. She's one who
+can't think of herself."
+
+"You've seen her at Raynham, Rip?"
+
+"Yes, once. They asked me down. And your father's so fond of
+her--I'm sure he thinks no woman like her, and he's right. She is so
+lovely, and so good."
+
+Richard was too full of blame of himself to blame his father: too
+British to expose his emotions. Ripton divined how deep and changed
+they were by his manner. He had cast aside the hero, and however
+Ripton had obeyed him and looked up to him in the heroic time, he
+loved him tenfold now. He told his friend how much Lucy's mere
+womanly sweetness and excellence had done for him, and Richard
+contrasted his own profitless extravagance with the patient beauty
+of his dear home angel. He was not one to take her on the easy terms
+that offered. There was that to do which made his cheek burn as he
+thought of it, but he was going to do it, even though it lost her to
+him. Just to see her and kneel to her was joy sufficient to sustain
+him, and warm his blood in the prospect. They marked the white
+cliffs growing over the water. Nearer, the sun made them lustrous.
+Houses and people seemed to welcome the wild youth to common sense,
+simplicity, and home.
+
+They were in town by mid-day. Richard had a momentary idea of not
+driving to his hotel for letters. After a short debate he determined
+to go there. The porter said he had two letters for Mr. Richard
+Feverel--one had been waiting some time. He went to the box and
+fetched them. The first Richard opened was from Lucy, and as he read
+it, Ripton observed the colour deepen on his face, while a quivering
+smile played about his mouth. He opened the other indifferently. It
+began without any form of address. Richard's forehead darkened at
+the signature. This letter was in a sloping feminine hand, and
+flourished with light strokes all over, like a field of the bearded
+barley. Thus it ran:
+
+     "I know you are in a rage with me because I would not consent
+     to ruin you, you foolish fellow. What do you call it? Going to
+     that unpleasant place together. Thank you, my milliner is not
+     ready yet, and I want to make a good appearance when I do go. I
+     suppose I shall have to some day. Your health, Sir Richard. Now
+     let me speak to you seriously. _Go home to your wife at once._
+     But I know the sort of fellow you are, and I must be plain with
+     you. Did I ever say I loved you? You may hate me as much as you
+     please, but I will save you from being a fool.
+
+     "Now listen to me. You know my relations with Mount. _That
+     beast Brayder_ offered to pay all my debts and set me afloat,
+     if I would keep you in town. I declare on my honour I had no
+     idea why, and I did not agree to it. But you were such a
+     handsome fellow--I noticed you in the park before I heard a
+     word of you. But then you fought shy--you were just as tempting
+     as a girl. You _stung_ me. Do you know what that is? I would
+     make you care for me, and we know how it ended, without any
+     intention of mine, I _swear_. I'd have cut off my hand rather
+     than do you any harm, upon my honour. Circumstances! Then I saw
+     it was all up between us. Brayder came and began to chaff about
+     you. I dealt the animal a stroke on the face with my
+     riding-whip--I shut him up pretty quick. Do you think I would
+     let a man speak about you?--I was going to swear. You see I
+     remember Dick's lessons. O my God! I do feel unhappy.--Brayder
+     offered me money. Go and think I took it, if you like. What do
+     I care what anybody thinks! Something that blackguard said made
+     me suspicious. I went down to the Isle of Wight where Mount
+     was, and your wife was just gone with an old lady who came and
+     took her away. I should so have liked to see her. You said, you
+     remember, she would take me as a sister, and treat me--I
+     laughed at it then. My God! how I could cry now, if water did
+     any good to a _devil_, as you politely call poor me. I called
+     at your house and saw your man-servant, who said Mount had just
+     been there. In a minute it struck me. I was sure Mount was
+     after a woman, but it never struck me that woman was your wife.
+     Then I saw why they wanted me to keep you away. I went to
+     Brayder. You know how I hate him. I made love to the man to get
+     it out of him. Richard! my word of honour, they have planned to
+     carry her off, if Mount finds he cannot seduce her. Talk of
+     devils! He's one; but he is not so bad as Brayder. I cannot
+     forgive a mean dog his villainy.
+
+     "Now after this, I am quite sure you are too much of a man to
+     stop away from her another moment. I have no more to say. I
+     suppose we shall not see each other again, so good-bye, Dick! I
+     fancy I hear you cursing me. Why can't you feel like other men
+     on the subject? But if you were like the rest of them I should
+     not have cared for you a farthing. I have not worn lilac since
+     I saw you last. I'll be buried in your colour, Dick. That will
+     not offend you--will it?
+
+     "You are not going to believe I took the money? If I thought
+     you thought that--it makes me _feel_ like a devil only to fancy
+     you think it.
+
+     "The first time you meet Brayder, _cane him publicly_.
+
+     "Adieu! Say it's because you don't like his face. I suppose
+     devils must not say _Adieu_. Here's plain old good-bye, then,
+     between you and me. Good-bye, dear Dick! You won't think that
+     of me?
+
+     "May I eat dry bread to the day of my death if I took or ever
+     will touch a scrap of their money.
+
+                                                             BELLA."
+
+Richard folded up the letter silently.
+
+"Jump into the cab," he said to Ripton.
+
+"Anything the matter, Richard?"
+
+"No."
+
+The driver received instructions. Richard sat without speaking. His
+friend knew that face. He asked whether there was bad news in the
+letter. For answer, he had the lie circumstantial. He ventured to
+remark that they were going the wrong way.
+
+"It's the right way," cried Richard, and his jaws were hard and
+square, and his eyes looked heavy and full.
+
+Ripton said no more, but thought.
+
+The cabman pulled up at a Club. A gentleman, in whom Ripton
+recognized the Hon. Peter Brayder, was just then swinging a leg over
+his horse, with one foot in the stirrup. Hearing his name called,
+the Hon. Peter turned about, and stretched an affable hand.
+
+"Is Mountfalcon in town?" said Richard, taking the horse's reins
+instead of the gentlemanly hand. His voice and aspect were quite
+friendly.
+
+"Mount?" Brayder replied, curiously watching the action; "yes. He's
+off this evening."
+
+"He _is_ in town?" Richard released his horse. "I want to see him.
+Where is he?"
+
+The young man looked pleasant: that which might have aroused
+Brayder's suspicions was an old affair in parasitical register by
+this time. "Want to see him? What about?" he said carelessly, and
+gave the address.
+
+"By the way," he sang out, "we thought of putting your name down,
+Feverel." He indicated the lofty structure. "What do you say?"
+
+Richard nodded back at him, crying, "Hurry." Brayder returned the
+nod, and those who promenaded the district soon beheld his body in
+elegant motion to the stepping of his well-earned horse.
+
+"What do you want to see Lord Mountfalcon for, Richard?" said
+Ripton.
+
+"I just want to see him," Richard replied.
+
+Ripton was left in the cab at the door of my lord's residence. He
+had to wait there a space of about ten minutes, when Richard
+returned with a clearer visage, though somewhat heated. He stood
+outside the cab, and Ripton was conscious of being examined by those
+strong grey eyes. As clear as speech he understood them to say to
+him, "You won't do," but which of the many things on earth he would
+not do for he was at a loss to think.
+
+"Go down to Raynham, Ripton. Say I shall be there to-night
+certainly. Don't bother me with questions. Drive off at once. Or
+wait. Get another cab. I'll take this."
+
+Ripton was ejected, and found himself standing alone in the street.
+As he was on the point of rushing after the galloping cab-horse to
+get a word of elucidation, he heard some one speak behind him.
+
+"You are Feverel's friend?"
+
+Ripton had an eye for lords. An ambrosial footman, standing at the
+open door of Lord Mountfalcon's house, and a gentleman standing on
+the door-step, told him that he was addressed by that nobleman. He
+was requested to step into the house. When they were alone, Lord
+Mountfalcon, slightly ruffled, said: "Feverel has insulted me
+grossly. I must meet him, of course. It's a piece of infernal
+folly!--I suppose he is not quite mad?"
+
+Ripton's only definite answer was a gasping iteration of "My lord."
+
+My lord resumed: "I am perfectly guiltless of offending him, as far
+as I know. In fact, I had a friendship for him. Is he liable to fits
+of this sort of thing?"
+
+Not yet at conversation-point, Ripton stammered: "Fits, my lord?"
+
+"Ah!" went the other, eying Ripton in lordly cognizant style. "You
+know nothing of this business, perhaps!"
+
+Ripton said he did not.
+
+"Have you any influence with him?"
+
+"Not much, my lord. Only now and then--a little."
+
+"You are not in the Army?"
+
+The question was quite unnecessary. Ripton confessed to the law, and
+my lord did not look surprised.
+
+"I will not detain you," he said, distantly bowing.
+
+Ripton gave him a commoner's obeisance; but getting to the door, the
+sense of the matter enlightened him.
+
+"It's a duel, my lord?"
+
+"No help for it, if his friends don't shut him up in Bedlam between
+this and to-morrow morning."
+
+Of all horrible things a duel was the worst in Ripton's imagination.
+He stood holding the handle of the door, revolving this last chapter
+of calamity suddenly opened where happiness had promised.
+
+"A duel! but he won't, my lord,--he mustn't fight, my lord."
+
+"He must come on the ground," said my lord, positively.
+
+Ripton ejaculated unintelligible stuff. Finally Lord Mountfalcon
+said: "I went out of my way, sir, in speaking to you. I saw you from
+the window. Your friend is mad. Deuced methodical, I admit, but mad.
+I have particular reasons to wish not to injure the young man, and
+if an apology is to be got out of him when we're on the ground, I'll
+take it, and we'll stop the damned scandal, if possible. You
+understand? I'm the insulted party, and I shall only require of him
+to use formal words of excuse to come to an amicable settlement. Let
+him just say he regrets it. Now, sir," the nobleman spoke with
+considerable earnestness, "should anything happen--I have the honour
+to be known to Mrs. Feverel--and I beg you will tell her. I very
+particularly desire you to let her know that I was not to blame."
+
+Mountfalcon rang the bell, and bowed him out. With this on his mind
+Ripton hurried down to those who were waiting in joyful trust at
+Raynham.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+THE LAST SCENE
+
+
+The watch consulted by Hippias alternately with his pulse, in occult
+calculation hideous to mark, said half-past eleven on the midnight.
+Adrian, wearing a composedly amused expression on his dimpled plump
+face,--held slightly sideways, aloof from paper and pen,--sat
+writing at the library table. Round the baronet's chair, in a
+semi-circle, were Lucy, Lady Blandish, Mrs. Doria, and Ripton, that
+very ill bird at Raynham. They were silent as those who question the
+flying minutes. Ripton had said that Richard was sure to come; but
+the feminine eyes reading him ever and anon, had gathered matter for
+disquietude, which increased as time sped. Sir Austin persisted in
+his habitual air of speculative repose.
+
+Remote as he appeared from vulgar anxiety, he was the first to speak
+and betray his state.
+
+"Pray, put up that watch. Impatience serves nothing," he said,
+half-turning hastily to his brother behind him.
+
+Hippias relinquished his pulse and mildly groaned: "It's no
+nightmare, this!"
+
+His remark was unheard, and the bearing of it remained obscure.
+Adrian's pen made a louder flourish on his manuscript; whether in
+commiseration or infernal glee, none might say.
+
+"What are you writing?" the baronet inquired testily of Adrian,
+after a pause; twitched, it may be, by a sort of jealousy of the
+wise youth's coolness.
+
+"Do I disturb you, sir?" rejoined Adrian. "I am engaged on a portion
+of a Proposal for uniting the Empires and Kingdoms of Europe under
+one Paternal Head, on the model of the ever-to-be-admired and
+lamented Holy Roman. This treats of the management of Youths and
+Maids, and of certain magisterial functions connected therewith. 'It
+is decreed that these officers be all and every men of science,'
+etc." And Adrian cheerily drove his pen afresh.
+
+Mrs. Doria took Lucy's hand, mutely addressing encouragement to
+her, and Lucy brought as much of a smile as she could command to
+reply with.
+
+"I fear we must give him up to-night," observed Lady Blandish.
+
+"If he said he would come, he will come," Sir Austin interjected.
+Between him and the lady there was something of a contest secretly
+going on. He was conscious that nothing save perfect success would
+now hold this self-emancipating mind. She had seen him through.
+
+"He declared to me he would be certain to come," said Ripton; but he
+could look at none of them as he said it, for he was growing aware
+that Richard might have deceived him, and was feeling like a black
+conspirator against their happiness. He determined to tell the
+baronet what he knew, if Richard did not come by twelve.
+
+"What is the time?" he asked Hippias in a modest voice.
+
+"Time for me to be in bed," growled Hippias, as if everybody present
+had been treating him badly.
+
+Mrs. Berry came in to apprise Lucy that she was wanted above. She
+quietly rose. Sir Austin kissed her on the forehead, saying: "You
+had better not come down again, my child." She kept her eyes on him.
+"Oblige me by retiring for the night," he added. Lucy shook their
+hands, and went out, accompanied by Mrs. Doria.
+
+"This agitation will be bad for the child," he said, speaking to
+himself aloud.
+
+Lady Blandish remarked: "I think she might just as well have
+returned. She will not sleep."
+
+"She will control herself for the child's sake."
+
+"You ask too much of her."
+
+"Of her, not," he emphasized.
+
+It was twelve o'clock when Hippias shut his watch, and said with
+vehemence: "I'm convinced my circulation gradually and steadily
+decreases!"
+
+"Going back to the pre-Harvey period?" murmured Adrian as he wrote.
+
+Sir Austin and Lady Blandish knew well that any comment would
+introduce them to the interior of his machinery, the external view
+of which was sufficiently harrowing; so they maintained a discreet
+reserve. Taking it for acquiescence in his deplorable condition,
+Hippias resumed despairingly: "It's a fact. I've brought you to see
+that. No one can be more moderate than I am, and yet I get worse.
+My system is organically sound--I believe: I do every possible
+thing, and yet I get worse. Nature never forgives! I'll go to bed."
+
+The Dyspepsy departed unconsoled.
+
+Sir Austin took up his brother's thought: "I suppose nothing short
+of a miracle helps us when we have offended her."
+
+"Nothing short of a quack satisfies us," said Adrian, applying wax
+to an envelope of official dimensions.
+
+Ripton sat accusing his soul of cowardice while they talked; haunted
+by Lucy's last look at him. He got up his courage presently and went
+round to Adrian, who, after a few whispered words, deliberately rose
+and accompanied him out of the room, shrugging. When they had gone,
+Lady Blandish said to the baronet: "He is not coming."
+
+"To-morrow, then, if not to-night," he replied. "But I say he will
+come to-night."
+
+"You do really wish to see him united to his wife?"
+
+The question made the baronet raise his brows with some displeasure.
+
+"Can you ask me?"
+
+"I mean," said the ungenerous woman, "your System will require no
+further sacrifices from either of them?"
+
+When he did answer, it was to say: "I think her altogether a
+superior person. I confess I should scarcely have hoped to find one
+like her."
+
+"Admit that your science does not accomplish everything."
+
+"No: it was presumptuous--beyond a certain point," said the baronet,
+meaning deep things.
+
+Lady Blandish eyed him. "Ah me!" she sighed, "if we would always be
+true to our own wisdom!"
+
+"You are very singular to-night, Emmeline," Sir Austin stopped his
+walk in front of her.
+
+In truth, was she not unjust? Here was an offending son freely
+forgiven. Here was a young woman of humble birth freely accepted
+into his family and permitted to stand upon her qualities. Who would
+have done more--or as much? This lady, for instance, had the case
+been hers, would have fought it. All the people of position that he
+was acquainted with would have fought it, and that without feeling
+it so peculiarly. But while the baronet thought this, he did not
+think of the exceptional education his son had received. He took the
+common ground of fathers, forgetting his System when it was
+absolutely on trial. False to his son it could not be said that he
+had been: false to his System he was. Others saw it plainly, but he
+had to learn his lesson by and by.
+
+Lady Blandish gave him her face; then stretched her hand to the
+table, saying, "Well! well!" She fingered a half-opened parcel lying
+there, and drew forth a little book she recognized. "Ha! what is
+this?" she said.
+
+"Benson returned it this morning," he informed her. "The stupid
+fellow took it away with him--by mischance, I am bound to believe."
+
+It was nothing other than the old Note-book. Lady Blandish turned
+over the leaves, and came upon the later jottings.
+
+She read: "A maker of Proverbs--what is he but a narrow mind with
+the mouthpiece of narrower?"
+
+"I do not agree with that," she observed. He was in no humour for
+argument.
+
+"Was your humility feigned when you wrote it?"
+
+He merely said: "Consider the sort of minds influenced by set
+sayings. A proverb is the half-way-house to an Idea, I conceive; and
+the majority rest there content: can the keeper of such a house be
+flattered by his company?"
+
+She felt her feminine intelligence swaying under him again. There
+must be greatness in a man who could thus speak of his own special
+and admirable aptitude.
+
+Further she read, "Which is the coward among us?--_He who sneers at
+the failings of Humanity!_"
+
+"Oh! that is true! How much I admire that!" cried the dark-eyed dame
+as she beamed intellectual raptures.
+
+Another Aphorism seemed closely to apply to him: "There is no more
+grievous sight, as there is no greater perversion, than a wise man
+at the mercy of his feelings."
+
+"He must have written it," she thought, "when he had himself for an
+example--strange man that he is!"
+
+Lady Blandish was still inclined to submission, though decidedly
+insubordinate. She had once been fairly conquered: but if what she
+reverenced as a great mind could conquer her, it must be a great man
+that should hold her captive. The Autumn Primrose blooms for the
+loftiest manhood; is a vindictive flower in lesser hands.
+Nevertheless Sir Austin had only to be successful, and this lady's
+allegiance was his for ever. The trial was at hand.
+
+She said again: "He is not coming to-night," and the baronet, on
+whose visage a contemplative pleased look had been rising for a
+minute past, quietly added: "He is come."
+
+Richard's voice was heard in the hall.
+
+There was commotion all over the house at the return of the young
+heir. Berry, seizing every possible occasion to approach his Bessy
+now that her involuntary coldness had enhanced her value--"Such is
+men!" as the soft woman reflected--Berry ascended to her and
+delivered the news in pompous tones and wheedling gestures. "The
+best word you've spoke for many a day," says she, and leaves him
+unfee'd, in an attitude, to hurry and pour bliss into Lucy's ears.
+
+"Lord be praised!" she entered the adjoining room exclaiming, "we're
+goin' to be happy at last. They men have come to their senses. I
+could cry to your Virgin and kiss your Cross, you sweet!"
+
+"Hush!" Lucy admonished her, and crooned over the child on her
+knees. The tiny open hands, full of sleep, clutched; the large blue
+eyes started awake; and his mother, all trembling and palpitating,
+knowing, but thirsting to hear it, covered him with her tresses, and
+tried to still her frame, and rocked, and sang low, interdicting
+even a whisper from bursting Mrs. Berry.
+
+Richard had come. He was under his father's roof, in the old home
+that had so soon grown foreign to him. He stood close to his wife
+and child. He might embrace them both; and now the fulness of his
+anguish and the madness of the thing he had done smote the young
+man: now first he tasted hard earthly misery.
+
+Had not God spoken to him in the tempest? Had not the finger of
+heaven directed him homeward? And he had come: here he stood:
+congratulations were thick in his ears: the cup of happiness was
+held to him, and he was invited to drink of it. Which was the dream?
+his work for the morrow, or this? But for a leaden load that he felt
+like a bullet in his breast, he might have thought the morrow with
+death sitting on it was the dream. Yes; he was awake. Now first the
+cloud of phantasms cleared away: he beheld his real life, and the
+colours of true human joy: and on the morrow perhaps he was to close
+his eyes on them. That leaden bullet dispersed all unrealities.
+
+They stood about him in the hall, his father, Lady Blandish, Mrs.
+Doria, Adrian, Ripton; people who had known him long. They shook his
+hand: they gave him greetings he had never before understood the
+worth of or the meaning. Now that he did they mocked him. There was
+Mrs. Berry in the background bobbing, there was Martin Berry bowing,
+there was Tom Bakewell grinning. Somehow he loved the sight of these
+better.
+
+"Ah, my old Penelope!" he said, breaking through the circle of his
+relatives to go to her. "Tom! how are you?"
+
+"Bless ye, my Mr. Richard," whimpered Mrs. Berry, and whispered
+rosily, "all's agreeable now. She's waiting up in bed for ye, like a
+new-born."
+
+The person who betrayed most agitation was Mrs. Doria. She held
+close to him, and eagerly studied his face and every movement, as
+one accustomed to masks. "You are pale, Richard?" He pleaded
+exhaustion. "What detained you, dear?" "Business," he said. She drew
+him imperiously apart from the others. "Richard! is it over?" He
+asked what she meant. "The dreadful duel, Richard." He looked
+darkly. "Is it over? is it done, Richard?" Getting no immediate
+answer, she continued--and such was her agitation that the words
+were shaken by pieces from her mouth: "Don't pretend not to
+understand me, Richard! Is it over? Are you going to die the death
+of my child--Clare's death? Is not one in a family enough? Think of
+your dear young wife--we love her so!--your child!--your father!
+Will you kill us all?"
+
+Mrs. Doria had chanced to overhear a trifle of Ripton's
+communication to Adrian, and had built thereon with the dark forces
+of a stricken soul.
+
+Wondering how this woman could have divined it, Richard calmly said:
+"It's arranged--the matter you allude to."
+
+"Indeed! truly, dear?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Tell me"--but he broke away from her, saying: "You shall hear the
+particulars to-morrow," and she, not alive to double meaning just
+then, allowed him to leave her.
+
+He had eaten nothing for twelve hours, and called for food, but he
+would take only dry bread and claret, which was served on a tray in
+the library. He said, without any show of feeling, that he must eat
+before he saw the younger hope of Raynham: so there he sat, breaking
+bread, and eating great mouthfuls, and washing them down with wine,
+talking of what they would. His father's studious mind felt itself
+years behind him, he was so completely altered. He had the precision
+of speech, the bearing of a man of thirty. Indeed he had all that
+the necessity for cloaking an infinite misery gives. But let things
+be as they might he was _there_. For one night in his life Sir
+Austin's perspective of the future was bounded by the night.
+
+"Will you go to your wife now?" he had asked, and Richard had
+replied with a strange indifference. The baronet thought it better
+that their meeting should be private, and sent word for Lucy to wait
+upstairs. The others perceived that father and son should now be
+left alone. Adrian went up to him, and said: "I can no longer
+witness this painful sight, so Good-night, Sir Famish! You may cheat
+yourself into the belief that you've made a meal, but depend upon it
+your progeny--and it threatens to be numerous--will cry aloud and
+rue the day. Nature never forgives! A lost dinner can never be
+replaced! Good-night, my dear boy. And here--oblige me by taking
+this," he handed Richard the enormous envelope containing what he
+had written that evening. "Credentials!" he exclaimed humorously,
+slapping Richard on the shoulder. Ripton heard also the words
+"propagator--species," but had no idea of their import. The wise
+youth looked: You see we've made matters all right for you here, and
+quitted the room on that unusual gleam of earnestness.
+
+Richard shook his hand, and Ripton's. Then Lady Blandish said her
+good-night, praising Lucy, and promising to pray for their mutual
+happiness. The two men who knew what was hanging over him, spoke
+together outside. Ripton was for getting a positive assurance that
+the duel would not be fought, but Adrian said: "Time enough
+to-morrow. He's safe enough while he's here. I'll stop it
+to-morrow:" ending with banter of Ripton and allusions to his
+adventures with Miss Random, which must, Adrian said, have led him
+into many affairs of the sort. Certainly Richard was there, and
+while he was there he must be safe. So thought Ripton, and went to
+his bed. Mrs. Doria deliberated likewise, and likewise thought him
+safe while he was there. For once in her life she thought it better
+not to trust to her instinct, for fear of useless disturbance where
+peace should be. So she said not a syllable of it to her brother.
+She only looked more deeply into Richard's eyes, as she kissed him,
+praising Lucy. "I have found a second daughter in her, dear. Oh! may
+you both be happy!"
+
+They all praised Lucy, now. His father commenced the moment they
+were alone. "Poor Helen! Your wife has been a great comfort to her,
+Richard. I think Helen must have sunk without her. So lovely a young
+person, possessing mental faculty, and a conscience for her duties,
+I have never before met."
+
+He wished to gratify his son by these eulogies of Lucy, and some
+hours back he would have succeeded. Now it had the contrary effect.
+
+"You compliment me on my choice, sir?"
+
+Richard spoke sedately, but the irony was perceptible, and he could
+speak no other way, his bitterness was so intense.
+
+"I think you very fortunate," said his father.
+
+Sensitive to tone and manner as he was, his ebullition of paternal
+feeling was frozen. Richard did not approach him. He leaned against
+the chimney-piece, glancing at the floor, and lifting his eyes only
+when he spoke. Fortunate! very fortunate! As he revolved his later
+history, and remembered how clearly he had seen that his father must
+love Lucy if he but knew her, and remembered his efforts to persuade
+her to come with him, a sting of miserable rage blackened his brain.
+But could he blame that gentle soul? Whom could he blame? Himself?
+Not utterly. His father? Yes, and no. The blame was here, the blame
+was there: it was everywhere and nowhere, and the young man cast it
+on the Fates, and looked angrily at heaven, and grew reckless.
+
+"Richard," said his father, coming close to him, "It is late
+to-night. I do not wish Lucy to remain in expectation longer, or I
+should have explained myself to you thoroughly, and I think--or at
+least hope--you would have justified me. I had cause to believe that
+you had not only violated my confidence, but grossly deceived me. It
+was not so, I now know. I was mistaken. Much of our misunderstanding
+has resulted from that mistake. But you were married--a boy: you
+knew nothing of the world, little of yourself. To save you in
+after-life--for there is a period when mature men and women who have
+married young are more impelled to temptation than in youth,--though
+not so exposed to it,--to save you, I say, I decreed that you should
+experience self-denial and learn something of your fellows of both
+sexes, before settling into a state that must have been otherwise
+precarious, however excellent the woman who is your mate. My System
+with you would have been otherwise imperfect, and you would have
+felt the effects of it. It is over now. You are a man. The dangers
+to which your nature was open are, I trust, at an end. I wish you to
+be happy, and I give you both my blessing, and pray God to conduct
+and strengthen you both."
+
+Sir Austin's mind was unconscious of not having spoken devoutly.
+True or not, his words were idle to his son: his talk of dangers
+over, and happiness, mockery.
+
+Richard coldly took his father's extended hand.
+
+"We will go to her," said the baronet. "I will leave you at her
+door."
+
+Not moving: looking fixedly at his father with a hard face on which
+the colour rushed, Richard said: "A husband who has been unfaithful
+to his wife may go to her there, sir?"
+
+It was horrible, it was cruel: Richard knew that. He wanted no
+advice on such a matter, having fully resolved what to do. Yesterday
+he would have listened to his father, and blamed himself alone, and
+done what was to be done humbly before God and her: now in the
+recklessness of his misery he had as little pity for any other soul
+as for his own. Sir Austin's brows were deep drawn down.
+
+"What did you say, Richard?"
+
+Clearly his intelligence had taken it, but this--the worst he could
+hear--this that he had dreaded once and doubted, and smoothed over,
+and cast aside--could it be?
+
+Richard said: "I told you all but the very words when we last
+parted. What else do you think would have kept me from her?"
+
+Angered at his callous aspect, his father cried: "What brings you to
+her now?"
+
+"That will be between us two," was the reply.
+
+Sir Austin fell into his chair. Meditation was impossible. He spoke
+from a wrathful heart: "You will not dare to take her without"----
+
+"No, sir," Richard interrupted him, "I shall not. Have no fear."
+
+"Then you did not love your wife?"
+
+"Did I not?" A smile passed faintly over Richard's face.
+
+"Did you care so much for this--this other person?"
+
+"So much? If you ask me whether I had affection for her, I can say I
+had none."
+
+O base human nature! Then how? then why? A thousand questions rose
+in the baronet's mind. Bessy Berry could have answered them every
+one.
+
+"Poor child! poor child!" he apostrophized Lucy, pacing the room.
+Thinking of her, knowing her deep love for his son--her true
+forgiving heart--it seemed she should be spared this misery.
+
+He proposed to Richard to spare her. Vast is the distinction between
+women and men in this one sin, he said, and supported it with
+physical and moral citations. His argument carried him so far, that
+to hear him one would have imagined he thought the sin in men small
+indeed. His words were idle.
+
+"She must know it," said Richard, sternly. "I will go to her now,
+sir, if you please."
+
+Sir Austin detained him, expostulated, contradicted himself,
+confounded his principles, made nonsense of all his theories. He
+could not induce his son to waver in his resolve. Ultimately, their
+good-night being interchanged, he understood that the happiness of
+Raynham depended on Lucy's mercy. He had no fears of her sweet
+heart, but it was a strange thing to have come to. On which should
+the accusation fall--on science, or on human nature?
+
+He remained in the library pondering over the question, at times
+breathing contempt for his son, and again seized with unwonted
+suspicion of his own wisdom: troubled, much to be pitied, even if he
+deserved that blow from his son which had plunged him into
+wretchedness.
+
+Richard went straight to Tom Bakewell, roused the heavy sleeper, and
+told him to have his mare saddled and waiting at the park gates East
+within an hour. Tom's nearest approach to a hero was to be a
+faithful slave to his master, and in doing this he acted to his
+conception of that high and glorious character. He got up and
+heroically dashed his head into cold water. "She shall be ready,
+sir," he nodded.
+
+"Tom! if you don't see me back here at Raynham, your money will go
+on being paid to you."
+
+"Rather see you than the money, Mr. Richard," said Tom.
+
+"And you will always watch and see no harm comes to her, Tom."
+
+"Mrs. Richard, sir?" Tom stared. "God bless me, Mr. Richard"----
+
+"No questions. You'll do what I say."
+
+"Ay, sir; that I will. Did'n Isle o' Wight."
+
+The very name of the Island shocked Richard's blood, and he had to
+walk up and down before he could knock at Lucy's door. That infamous
+conspiracy to which he owed his degradation and misery scarce left
+him the feelings of a man when he thought of it.
+
+The soft beloved voice responded to his knock. He opened the door,
+and stood before her. Lucy was half-way toward him. In the moment
+that passed ere she was in his arms, he had time to observe the
+change in her. He had left her a girl: he beheld a woman--a blooming
+woman: for pale at first, no sooner did she see him than the colour
+was rich and deep on her face and neck and bosom half shown through
+the loose dressing-robe, and the sense of her exceeding beauty made
+his heart thump and his eyes swim.
+
+"My darling!" each cried, and they clung together, and her mouth was
+fastened on his.
+
+They spoke no more. His soul was drowned in her kiss. Supporting
+her, whose strength was gone, he, almost as weak as she, hung over
+her, and clasped her closer, closer, till they were as one body, and
+in the oblivion her lips put upon him he was free to the bliss of
+her embrace. Heaven granted him that. He placed her in a chair and
+knelt at her feet with both arms around her. Her bosom heaved; her
+eyes never quitted him: their light as the light on a rolling wave.
+This young creature, commonly so frank and straightforward, was
+broken with bashfulness in her husband's arms--womanly bashfulness
+on the torrent of womanly love; tenfold more seductive than the
+bashfulness of girlhood. Terrible tenfold the loss of her seemed
+now, as distantly--far on the horizon of memory--the fatal truth
+returned to him.
+
+Lose her? lose this? He looked up as if to ask God to confirm it.
+
+The same sweet blue eyes! the eyes that he had often seen in the
+dying glories of evening; on him they dwelt, shifting, and
+fluttering, and glittering, but constant: the light of them as the
+light on a rolling wave.
+
+And true to him! true, good, glorious, as the angels of heaven! And
+his she was! a woman--his wife! The temptation to take her, and be
+dumb, was all powerful: the wish to die against her bosom so strong
+as to be the prayer of his vital forces. Again he strained her to
+him, but this time it was as a robber grasps priceless treasure--with
+exultation and defiance. One instant of this. Lucy, whose pure
+tenderness had now surmounted the first wild passion of their
+meeting, bent back her head from her surrendered body, and said
+almost voicelessly, her underlids wistfully quivering: "Come and
+see him--baby;" and then in great hope of the happiness she was
+going to give her husband, and share with him, and in tremour and
+doubt of what his feelings would be, she blushed, and her brows
+worked: she tried to throw off the strangeness of a year of
+separation, misunderstanding, and uncertainty.
+
+"Darling! come and see him. He is here." She spoke more clearly,
+though no louder.
+
+Richard had released her, and she took his hand, and he suffered
+himself to be led to the other side of the bed. His heart began
+rapidly throbbing at the sight of a little rosy-curtained cot
+covered with lace like milky summer cloud.
+
+It seemed to him he would lose his manhood if he looked on that
+child's face.
+
+"Stop!" he cried suddenly.
+
+Lucy turned first to him, and then to her infant, fearing it should
+have been disturbed.
+
+"Lucy, come back."
+
+"What is it, darling?" said she, in alarm at his voice and the grip
+he had unwittingly given her hand.
+
+O God! what an Ordeal was this! that to-morrow he must face death,
+perhaps die and be torn from his darling--his wife and his child;
+and that ere he went forth, ere he could dare to see his child and
+lean his head reproachfully on his young wife's breast--for the last
+time, it might be--he must stab her to the heart, shatter the image
+she held of him.
+
+"Lucy!" She saw him wrenched with agony, and her own face took the
+whiteness of his--she bending forward to him, all her faculties
+strung to hearing.
+
+He held her two hands that she might look on him and not spare the
+horrible wounds he was going to lay open to her eyes.
+
+"Lucy. Do you know why I came to you to-night?"
+
+She moved her lips repeating his words.
+
+"Lucy. Have you guessed why I did not come before?"
+
+Her head shook widened eyes.
+
+"Lucy. I did not come because I was not worthy of my wife! Do you
+understand?"
+
+"Darling," she faltered plaintively, and hung crouching under him,
+"what have I done to make you angry with me?"
+
+"O beloved!" cried he, the tears bursting out of his eyes. "O
+beloved!" was all he could say, kissing her hands passionately.
+
+She waited, reassured, but in terror.
+
+"Lucy. I stayed away from you--I could not come to you, because ...
+I dared not come to you, my wife, my beloved! I could not come
+because I was a coward: because--hear me--this was the reason: I
+have broken my marriage oath."
+
+Again her lips moved. She caught at a dim fleshless meaning in
+them. "But you love me? Richard! My husband! you love me?"
+
+"Yes. I have never loved, I never shall love, woman but you."
+
+"Darling! Kiss me."
+
+"Have you understood what I have told you?"
+
+"Kiss me," she said.
+
+He did not join lips. "I have come to you to-night to ask your
+forgiveness."
+
+Her answer was: "Kiss me."
+
+"Can you forgive a man so base?"
+
+"But you love me, Richard?"
+
+"Yes: that I can say before God. I love you, and I have betrayed
+you, and am unworthy of you--not worthy to touch your hand, to kneel
+at your feet, to breathe the same air with you."
+
+Her eyes shone brilliantly. "You love me! you love me, darling!" And
+as one who has sailed through dark fears into daylight, she said:
+"My husband! my darling! you will never leave me? We never shall be
+parted again?"
+
+He drew his breath painfully. To smooth her face growing rigid with
+fresh fears of his silence, he met her mouth. That kiss in which she
+spoke what her soul had to say, calmed her, and she smiled happily
+from it, and in her manner reminded him of his first vision of her
+on the summer morning in the field of the meadow-sweet. He held her
+to him, and thought then of a holier picture: of Mother and Child:
+of the sweet wonders of the life she had made real to him.
+
+Had he not absolved his conscience? At least the pangs to come made
+him think so. He now followed her leading hand. Lucy whispered: "You
+mustn't disturb him--mustn't touch him, dear!" and with dainty
+fingers drew off the covering to the little shoulder. One arm of the
+child was out along the pillow; the small hand open. His baby-mouth
+was pouted full; the dark lashes of his eyes seemed to lie on his
+plump cheeks. Richard stooped lower down to him, hungering for some
+movement as a sign that he lived. Lucy whispered. "He sleeps like
+you, Richard--one arm under his head." Great wonder, and the stir of
+a grasping tenderness was in Richard. He breathed quick and soft,
+bending lower, till Lucy's curls, as she nestled and bent with him,
+rolled on the crimson quilt of the cot. A smile went up the plump
+cheeks: forthwith the bud of a mouth was in rapid motion. The young
+mother whispered, blushing: "He's dreaming of me," and the simple
+words did more than Richard's eyes to make him see what was. Then
+Lucy began to hum and buzz sweet baby-language, and some of the tiny
+fingers stirred, and he made as if to change his cosy position, but
+reconsidered, and deferred it, with a peaceful little sigh. Lucy
+whispered: "He is such a big fellow. Oh! when you see him awake he
+is so like you, Richard."
+
+He did not hear her immediately: it seemed a bit of heaven dropped
+there in his likeness: the more human the fact of the child grew the
+more heavenly it seemed. His son! his child! should he ever see him
+awake? At the thought, he took the words that had been spoken, and
+started from the dream he had been in. "Will he wake soon, Lucy?"
+
+"Oh no! not yet, dear: not for hours. I would have kept him awake
+for you, but he was _so_ sleepy."
+
+Richard stood back from the cot. He thought that if he saw the eyes
+of his boy, and had him once on his heart, he never should have
+force to leave him. Then he looked down on him, again struggled to
+tear himself away. Two natures warred in his bosom, or it may have
+been the Magian Conflict still going on. He had come to see his
+child once and to make peace with his wife before it should be too
+late. Might he not stop with them? Might he not relinquish that
+devilish pledge? Was not divine happiness here offered to him?--If
+foolish Ripton had not delayed to tell him of his interview with
+Mountfalcon all might have been well. But pride said it was
+impossible. And then injury spoke. For why was he thus base and
+spotted to the darling of his love? A mad pleasure in the prospect
+of wreaking vengeance on the villain who had laid the trap for him,
+once more blackened his brain. If he would stay he could not. So he
+resolved, throwing the burden on Fate. The struggle was over, but
+oh, the pain!
+
+Lucy beheld the tears streaming hot from his face on the child's
+cot. She marvelled at such excess of emotion. But when his chest
+heaved, and the extremity of mortal anguish appeared to have seized
+him, her heart sank, and she tried to get him in her arms. He turned
+away from her and went to the window. A half-moon was over the lake.
+
+"Look!" he said, "do you remember our rowing there one night, and we
+saw the shadow of the cypress? I wish I could have come early
+to-night that we might have had another row, and I have heard you
+sing there!"
+
+"Darling!" said she, "will it make you happier if I go with you now?
+I will."
+
+"No, Lucy. Lucy, you are brave!"
+
+"Oh, no! that I'm not. I thought so once. I know I am not now."
+
+"Yes! to have lived--the child on your heart--and never to have
+uttered a complaint!--you are brave. O my Lucy! my wife! you that
+have made me man! I called you a coward. I remember it. I was the
+coward--_I_ the wretched vain fool! Darling! I am going to leave you
+now. You are brave, and you will bear it. Listen: in two days, or
+three, I may be back--back for good, if you will accept me. Promise
+me to go to bed quietly. Kiss the child for me, and tell him his
+father has seen him. He will learn to speak soon. Will he soon
+speak, Lucy?"
+
+Dreadful suspicion kept her speechless; she could only clutch one
+arm of his with both her hands.
+
+"Going?" she presently gasped.
+
+"For two or three days. No more--I hope."
+
+"To-night?"
+
+"Yes. Now."
+
+"Going now? my husband!" her faculties abandoned her.
+
+"You will be brave, my Lucy!"
+
+"Richard! my darling husband! Going? What is it takes you from me?"
+But questioning no further, she fell on her knees, and cried
+piteously to him to stay--not to leave them. Then she dragged him to
+the little sleeper, and urged him to pray by his side, and he did,
+but rose abruptly from his prayer when he had muttered a few broken
+words--she praying on with tight-strung nerves, in the faith that
+what she said to the interceding Mother above would be stronger than
+human hands on him. Nor could he go while she knelt there.
+
+And he wavered. He had not reckoned on her terrible suffering. She
+came to him, quiet. "I knew you would remain." And taking his hand,
+innocently fondling it: "Am I so changed from her he loved? You will
+not leave me, dear?" But dread returned, and the words quavered as
+she spoke them.
+
+He was almost vanquished by the loveliness of her womanhood. She
+drew his hand to her heart, and strained it there under one breast.
+"Come: lie on my heart," she murmured with a smile of holy
+sweetness.
+
+He wavered more, and drooped to her, but summoning the powers of
+hell, kissed her suddenly, cried the words of parting, and hurried
+to the door. It was over in an instant. She cried out his name,
+clinging to him wildly, and was adjured to be brave, for he would be
+dishonoured if he did not go. Then she was shaken off.
+
+Mrs. Berry was aroused by an unusual prolonged wailing of the child,
+which showed that no one was comforting it, and failing to get any
+answer to her applications for admittance, she made bold to enter.
+There she saw Lucy, the child in her lap, sitting on the floor
+senseless:--she had taken it from its sleep and tried to follow her
+husband with it as her strongest appeal to him, and had fainted.
+
+"Oh my! oh my!" Mrs. Berry moaned, "and I just now thinkin' they was
+so happy!"
+
+Warming and caressing the poor infant, she managed by degrees to
+revive Lucy, and heard what had brought her to that situation.
+
+"Go to his father," said Mrs. Berry. "Ta-te-tiddle-te-heighty-O! Go,
+my love, and every horse in Raynham shall be out after 'm. This is
+what men brings us to! Heighty-oighty-iddlety-Ah! Or you take
+blessed baby, and I'll go."
+
+The baronet himself knocked at the door. "What is this?" he said. "I
+heard a noise and a step descend."
+
+"It's Mr. Richard have gone, Sir Austin! have gone from his wife and
+babe! Rum-te-um-te-iddledy--Oh, my goodness! what sorrow's come on
+us!" and Mrs. Berry wept, and sang to baby, and baby cried
+vehemently, and Lucy, sobbing, took him and danced him and sang to
+him with drawn lips and tears dropping over him. And if the
+Scientific Humanist to the day of his death forgets the sight of
+those two poor true women jigging on their wretched hearts to calm
+the child, he must have very little of the human in him.
+
+There was no more sleep for Raynham that night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+LADY BLANDISH TO AUSTIN WENTWORTH
+
+
+"His ordeal is over. I have just come from his room and seen him
+bear the worst that could be. Return at once--he has asked for you.
+I can hardly write intelligibly, but I will tell you what we know.
+
+"Two days after the dreadful night when he left us, his father heard
+from Ralph Morton. Richard had fought a duel in France with Lord
+Mountfalcon, and was lying wounded at a hamlet on the coast. His
+father started immediately with his poor wife, and I followed in
+company with his aunt and his child. The wound was not dangerous. He
+was shot in the side somewhere, but the ball injured no vital part.
+We thought all would be well. Oh! how sick I am of theories, and
+Systems, and the pretensions of men! There was his son lying all but
+dead, and the man was still unconvinced of the folly he had been
+guilty of. I could hardly bear the sight of his composure. I shall
+hate the name of Science till the day I die. Give me nothing but
+commonplace unpretending people!
+
+"They were at a wretched French cabaret, smelling vilely, where we
+still remain, and the people try as much as they can do to
+compensate for our discomforts by their kindness. The French poor
+people are very considerate where they see suffering. I will say
+that for them. The doctors had not allowed his poor Lucy to go near
+him. She sat outside his door, and none of us dared disturb her.
+That was a sight for Science. His father and myself, and Mrs. Berry,
+were the only ones permitted to wait on him, and whenever we came
+out, there she sat, not speaking a word--for she had been told it
+would endanger his life--but she looked such awful eagerness. She
+had the sort of eye I fancy mad persons have. I was sure her reason
+was going. We did everything we could think of to comfort her. A bed
+was made up for her and her meals were brought to her there. Of
+course there was no getting her to eat. What do you suppose _his_
+alarm was fixed on? He absolutely said to me--but I have not
+patience to repeat his words. He thought her to blame for not
+_commanding_ herself for the sake of her _maternal duties_. He had
+absolutely an idea of insisting that she should make an effort to
+suckle the child. I shall love that Mrs. Berry to the end of my
+days. I really believe she has _twice_ the sense of any of
+us--Science and all. She asked him plainly if he wished to poison
+the child, and then he gave way, but with a bad grace.
+
+"Poor man! perhaps I am hard on him. I remember that you said
+Richard had done wrong. Yes; well, that may be. But his father
+eclipsed his wrong in a greater wrong--a crime, or quite as bad; for
+if he deceived himself in the belief that he was acting righteously
+in separating husband and wife, and exposing his son as he did, I
+can only say that there are some who are worse than people who
+deliberately commit _crimes_. No doubt Science will benefit by it.
+They kill little animals for the sake of Science.
+
+"We have with us Doctor Bairam, and a French physician from Dieppe,
+a very skilful man. It was he who told us where the real danger lay.
+We thought all would be well. A week had passed, and no fever
+supervened. We told Richard that his wife was coming to him, and he
+could bear to hear it. I went to her and began to circumlocute,
+thinking she listened--she had the same eager look. When I told her
+she might go in with me to see her dear husband, her features did
+not change. M. Despres, who held her pulse at the time, told me, in
+a whisper, it was cerebral fever--brain fever coming on. We have
+talked of her since. I noticed that though she did not seem to
+understand me, her bosom heaved, and she appeared to be trying to
+repress it, and choke something. I am sure now, from what I know of
+her character, that she--even in the approaches of delirium--was
+preventing herself from crying out. Her last hold of reason was a
+thought for Richard. It was against a creature like this that we
+plotted! I have the comfort of knowing that I did my share in
+helping to destroy her. Had she seen her husband a day or two
+before--but no! there was a new _System_ to interdict that! Or had
+she not so violently controlled her nature as she did, I believe she
+might have been saved.
+
+"He said once of a man, that his conscience was a coxcomb. Will you
+believe that when he saw his son's wife--poor victim! lying
+delirious, he could not even then see his error. You said he wished
+to take Providence out of God's hands. His mad self-deceit would not
+leave him. I am positive, that while he was standing over her, he
+was blaming her for not having considered the child. Indeed he made
+a remark to me that it was unfortunate--'disastrous,' I think he
+said--that the child should have to be fed by hand. I dare say it
+is. All I pray is that this young child may be saved from him. I
+cannot bear to see him look on it. He does not spare himself
+_bodily_ fatigue--but what is that? that is the vulgarest form of
+love. I know what you will say. You will say I have lost all
+charity, and I have. But I should not feel so, Austin, if I could be
+_quite sure_ that he is an altered man even now the blow has struck
+him. He is reserved and simple in his speech, and his grief is
+evident, but I have doubts. He heard her while she was senseless
+call him cruel and harsh, and cry that she had suffered, and I saw
+then his mouth contract as if he had been touched. Perhaps, when he
+thinks, his mind will be clearer, but what he has done cannot be
+undone. I do not imagine he will abuse women any more. The doctor
+called her a 'forte et belle jeune femme:' and _he_ said she was as
+noble a soul as ever God moulded clay upon. A noble soul 'forte et
+belle!' She lies upstairs. If he can look on her and not see his
+_sin_, I almost fear God will never enlighten him.
+
+"She died five days after she had been removed. The shock had
+utterly deranged her. I was with her. She died very quietly,
+breathing her last breath without pain--asking for no one--a death I
+should like to die.
+
+"Her cries at one time were dreadfully loud. She screamed that she
+was 'drowning in fire,' and that her husband would not come to her
+to save her. We deadened the sound as much as we could, but it was
+impossible to prevent Richard from hearing. He knew her voice, and
+it produced an effect like fever on him. Whenever she called he
+answered. You could not hear them without weeping. Mrs. Berry sat
+with her, and I sat with him, and his father moved from one to the
+other.
+
+"But the trial for us came when she was gone. How to communicate it
+to Richard--or whether to do so at all! His father consulted with
+us. We were quite decided that it would be madness to breathe it
+while he was in that state. I can admit now--as things have turned
+out--we were wrong. His father left us--I believe he spent the time
+in prayer--and then leaning on me, he went to Richard, and said in
+so many words, that his Lucy was no more. I thought it must kill
+him. He listened, and smiled. I never saw a smile so sweet and so
+sad. He said he had seen her die, as if he had passed through his
+suffering a long time ago. He shut his eyes. I could see by the
+motion of his eyeballs up that he was straining his sight to some
+inner heaven.--I cannot go on.
+
+"I think Richard is safe. Had we postponed the tidings, till he came
+to his clear senses, it must have killed him. His father was right
+for once, then. But if he has saved his son's body, he has given the
+death-blow to his heart. Richard will never be what he promised.
+
+"A letter found on his clothes tells us the origin of the quarrel. I
+have had an interview with Lord M. this morning. I cannot say I
+think him exactly to blame: Richard forced him to fight. At least I
+do not select him the foremost for blame. He was deeply and
+sincerely affected by the calamity he has caused. Alas! he was only
+an instrument. Your poor aunt is utterly prostrate and talks strange
+things of her daughter's death. She is only happy in _drudging_. Dr.
+Bairam says we must under any circumstances keep her employed.
+Whilst she is doing something, she can chat freely, but the moment
+her hands are not occupied she gives me an idea that she is going
+into a fit.
+
+"We expect the dear child's uncle to-day. Mr. Thompson is here. I
+have taken him upstairs to look at her. That poor young man has a
+true heart.
+
+"Come at once. You will not be in time to see her. She will lie at
+Raynham. If you could you would see an angel. _He_ sits by her side
+for hours. I can give you no description of her beauty.
+
+"You will not delay, I know, dear Austin, and I want you, for your
+presence will make me more charitable than I find it possible to be.
+Have you noticed the expression in the eyes of blind men? That is
+just how Richard looks, as he lies there silent in his bed--striving
+to image her on his brain."
+
+
+
+
+The Modern Student's Library
+
+
+NOVELS
+
+  AUSTEN: Pride and Prejudice
+  With an introduction by WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
+
+  BUNYAN: The Pilgrim's Progress
+  With an introduction by SAMUEL MCCHORD CROTHERS
+
+  COOPER: The Spy
+  With an introduction by TREMAINE MCDOWELL, Associate Professor
+  of English, University of Minnesota
+
+  ELIOT: Adam Bede
+  With an introduction by LAURA JOHNSON WYLIE, formerly Professor
+  of English, Vassar College
+
+  FIELDING: The Adventures of Joseph Andrews
+  With an introduction by BRUCE MCCULLOUGH, Associate Professor
+  of English, New York University
+
+  GALSWORTHY: The Patrician
+  With an introduction by BLISS PERRY, Professor of English
+  Literature, Harvard University
+
+  HARDY: The Return of the Native
+  With an introduction by J. W. CUNLIFFE, Professor of English,
+  Columbia University
+
+  HAWTHORNE: The Scarlet Letter
+  With an introduction by STUART P. SHERMAN, late Literary Editor of
+  the New York _Herald Tribune_
+
+  MEREDITH: Evan Harrington
+  With an introduction by GEORGE F. REYNOLDS, Professor of English
+  Literature, University of Colorado
+
+  MEREDITH: The Ordeal of Richard Feverel
+  With an introduction by FRANK W. CHANDLER, Professor of English
+  and Comparative Literature, and Dean of the College of Liberal
+  Arts, University of Cincinnati
+
+  SCOTT: The Heart of Midlothian
+  With an introduction by WILLIAM P. TRENT, Professor of English
+  Literature, Columbia University
+
+  STEVENSON: The Master of Ballantrae
+  With an introduction by H. S. CANBY, Assistant Editor of the
+  _Yale Review_  and Editor of the _Saturday Review_
+
+  THACKERAY: The History of Pendennis
+  With an introduction by ROBERT MORSS LOVETT, Professor of
+  English, University of Chicago. 2 vols.
+
+  TROLLOPE: Barchester Towers
+  With an introduction by CLARENCE D. STEVENS, Professor of
+  English, University of Cincinnati
+
+  WHARTON: Ethan Frome
+  With a special introduction by EDITH WHARTON
+
+  THREE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ROMANCES: The Castle of Otranto, Vathek,
+  The Romance of the Forest
+  With an introduction by HARRISON R. STEEVES, Professor of
+  English, Columbia University
+
+
+POETRY
+
+  BROWNING: Poems and Plays
+  Edited by HEWETTE E. JOYCE, Assistant Professor of English,
+  Dartmouth College
+
+  BROWNING: The Ring and the Book
+  Edited by FREDERICK MORGAN PADEIFORD, Professor of English,
+  University of Washington
+
+  TENNYSON: Poems
+  Edited by J. F. A. PYRE, Professor of English, University of
+  Wisconsin
+
+  WHITMAN: Leaves of Grass
+  Edited by STUART P. SHERMAN, late Literary Editor of the
+  New York _Herald Tribune_
+
+  WORDSWORTH: Poems
+  Edited by GEORGE M. HARPER, Professor of English, Princeton
+  University
+
+  AMERICAN SONGS AND BALLADS
+  Edited by LOUISE POUND, Professor of English, University of
+  Nebraska
+
+  ENGLISH POETS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
+  Edited by ERNEST BERNBAUM, Professor of English, University
+  of Illinois
+
+  MINOR VICTORIAN POETS
+  Edited by JOHN D. COOKE, Professor of English, University of
+  Southern California
+
+  ROMANTIC POETRY OF THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY
+  Edited by ARTHUR BEATTY, Professor of English, University of
+  Wisconsin
+
+
+ESSAYS AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE
+
+  ADDISON AND STEELE: Selections
+  Edited by WILL D. HOWE, formerly head of the Department of
+  English, Indiana University
+
+  ARNOLD: Prose and Poetry
+  Edited by ARCHIBALD L. BOUTON, Professor of English and Dean
+  of the Graduate School, New York University
+
+  BACON: Essays
+  Edited by MARY AUGUSTA SCOTT, late Professor of the English
+  Language and Literature, Smith College
+
+  BROWNELL: American Prose Masters
+  Edited by STUART P. SHERMAN, late Literary Editor of the New
+  York _Herald Tribune_
+
+  BURKE: Selections
+  Edited by LESLIE NATHAN BROUGHTON, Assistant Professor of English,
+  Cornell University
+
+  CARLYLE: Past and Present
+  Edited by EDWIN MIMS, Professor of English, Vanderbilt University
+
+  CARLYLE: Sartor Resartus
+  Edited by ASHLEY H. THORNDIKE, Professor of English, Columbia
+  University
+
+  EMERSON: Essays and Poems
+  Edited by ARTHUR HOBSON QUINN, Professor of English, University
+  of Pennsylvania
+
+  FRANKLIN AND EDWARDS: Selections
+  Edited by CARL VAN DOREN, Associate Professor of English,
+  Columbia University
+
+  HAZLITT: Essays
+  Edited by PERCY V. D. SHELLY, Professor of English, University
+  of Pennsylvania
+
+  LINCOLN: Selections
+  Edited by NATHANIEL WRIGHT STEPHENSON, author of "Lincoln: His
+  Personal Life"
+
+  MACAULAY: Historical Essays
+  Edited by CHARLES DOWNER HAZEN, Professor of History, Columbia
+  University
+
+  MEREDITH: An Essay on Comedy
+  Edited by LANE COOPER, Professor of the English Language
+  and Literature, Cornell University
+
+  PARKMAN: The Oregon Trail
+  Edited by JAMES CLOYD BOWMAN, Professor of English, Northern State
+  Normal College, Marquette, Mich.
+
+  POE: Tales
+  Edited by JAMES SOUTHALL WILSON, Edgar Allan Poe Professor of
+  English, University of Virginia
+
+  RUSKIN: Selections and Essays
+  Edited by FREDERICK WILLIAM ROE, Professor of English,
+  University of Wisconsin
+
+  STEVENSON: Essays
+  Edited by WILLIAM LYON PHELPS, Lampson Professor of English
+  Literature, Yale University
+
+  SWIFT: Selections
+  Edited by HARDIN CRAIG, Professor of English, University of Iowa
+
+  THOREAU: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
+  Edited by ODELL SHEPARD, James J. Goodwin Professor of
+  English, Trinity College
+
+  CONTEMPORARY ESSAYS
+  Edited by ODELL SHEPARD, James J. Goodwin Professor of English,
+  Trinity College
+
+  CRITICAL ESSAYS OF THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY
+  Edited by RAYMOND M. ALDEN, late Professor of English, Leland
+  Stanford University
+
+  SELECTIONS FROM THE FEDERALIST
+  Edited by JOHN S. BASSETT, late Professor of History, Smith College
+
+  NINETEENTH CENTURY LETTERS
+  Edited by BYRON JOHNSON REES, late Professor of English,
+  Williams College
+
+  ROMANTIC PROSE OF THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY
+  Edited by CARL H. GRABO, Professor of English, University of
+  Chicago
+
+  SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ESSAYS
+  Edited by JACOB ZEITLIN, Associate Professor of English,
+  University of Illinois
+
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+  BOSWELL: Life of Johnson
+  Abridged and Edited by CHARLES GROSVENOR OSGOOD, Professor
+  of English, Princeton University
+
+  CROCKETT: Autobiography of David Crockett
+  Edited by HAMLIN GARLAND
+
+
+PHILOSOPHY SERIES
+
+  =Editor, Ralph Barton Perry=
+  _Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University_
+
+  ARISTOTLE: Selections
+  Edited by W. D. ROSS, Professor of Philosophy, Oriel College,
+  University of Oxford
+
+  BACON: Selections
+  Edited by MATTHEW THOMPSON MCCLURE, Professor of Philosophy,
+  University of Illinois
+
+  BERKELEY: Selections
+  Edited by MARY W. CALKINS, late Professor of Philosophy and
+  Psychology, Wellesley College
+
+  DESCARTES: Selections
+  Edited by RALPH M. EATON, late Assistant Professor of Philosophy,
+  Harvard University
+
+  HEGEL: Selections
+  Edited by JACOB LOEWENBERG, Professor of Philosophy, University
+  of California
+
+  HOBBES: Selections
+  Edited by FREDERICK J. E. WOODBRIDGE, Johnsonian Professor
+  of Philosophy, Columbia University
+
+  HUME: Selections
+  Edited by CHARLES W. HENDEL, JR., Professor of Philosophy, McGill
+  University
+
+  KANT: Selections
+  Edited by THEODORE M. GREENE, Associate Professor of Philosophy,
+  Princeton University
+
+  LOCKE: Selections
+  Edited by STERLING P. LAMPRECHT, Professor of Philosophy, Amherst
+  College
+
+  PLATO: The Republic
+  With an introduction by C. M. BAKEWELL, Professor of Philosophy, Yale
+  University
+
+  PLATO: Selections
+  Edited by RAPHAEL DEMOS, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Harvard
+  University
+
+  SCHOPENHAUER: Selections
+  Edited by DEWITT H. PARKER, Professor of Philosophy, University of
+  Michigan
+
+  SPINOZA: Selections
+  Edited by JOHN D. WILD, Instructor in Philosophy, Harvard University
+
+  MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY
+  Edited by RICHARD MCKEON, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Columbia
+  University
+
+
+FRENCH SERIES
+
+  =Editor, Horatio Smith=
+  _Professor of French Language and Literature, Brown University_
+
+  BALZAC: Le Pere Goriot
+  With an introduction by HORATIO SMITH, Brown University
+
+  CORNEILLE: Le Cid, Horace, Polyeucte, Le Menteur
+  Edited by C. H. C. WRIGHT, Professor of French Language and
+  Literature, Harvard University
+
+  FLAUBERT: Madame Bovary
+  With an introduction by CHRISTIAN GAUSS, Dean of the College,
+  Princeton University
+
+  MADAME DE LA FAYETTE: La Princesse de Cleves
+  With an introduction by H. ASHTON, Professor of French Language and
+  Literature, University of British Columbia
+
+  MOLIERE: Les Precieuses Ridicules, Le Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope
+  Edited by WILLIAM A. NITZE and HILDA L. NORMAN, University of Chicago
+
+  PREVOST: Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut
+  With an introduction by LOUIS LANDRE, Associate Professor of French,
+  Brown University
+
+  RACINE: Andromaque, Britannicus, Phedre
+  Edited by H. CARRINGTON LANCASTER, Professor of French Literature,
+  Johns Hopkins University, and EDMOND A. MERAS, Professor of French
+  Literature, Adelphi College
+
+  GEORGE SAND: Indiana
+  With an introduction by HERMANN H. THORNTON, Associate Professor of
+  French and Italian, Oberlin College
+
+  STENDHAL: Le Rouge et le Noir
+  With an introduction by PAUL HAZARD, College de France
+
+  VOLTAIRE: Candide and Other Philosophical Tales
+  Edited by MORRIS BISHOP, Assistant Professor of the Romance Languages
+  and Literature, Cornell University
+
+  FRENCH ROMANTIC PLAYS: Dumas's "Antony," Hugo's "Hernani"
+  and "Ruy Blas," Vigny's "Chatterton," Musset's "On ne badine pas
+  avec l'amour."
+  Edited by W. W. COMFORT, President, Haverford College
+
+  FRENCH ROMANTIC PROSE
+  Edited by W. W. COMFORT, President, Haverford College
+
+  FOUR FRENCH COMEDIES OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: Lesage's
+  "Turcaret," Marivaux's "Le jeu de l'amour et du hasard,"
+  Sedaine's "Le philosophe sans le savoir," Beaumarchais's "Le
+  barbier de Seville"
+  Edited by CASIMIR D. ZDANOWICZ, Professor of French, University of
+  Wisconsin
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
+
+
+1. Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_.
+
+2. Passages in bold are indicated by =.
+
+3. Other than the corrections listed below, printer's inconsistencies
+in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation usage have been retained:
+
+  Pg. 3 "Feveral" corrected to "Feverel" (Hippias Feverel)
+  Pg. 25 "run" corrected to "rung" (bell was rung)
+  Pg. 38 "pursuade" corrected to "persuade" (persuade her to disrobe)
+  Pg. 44 "Said" corrected to "said" (coward?" said)
+  Pg. 52 "Feveral" corrected to "Feverel" (a Feverel asking this)
+  Pg. 75 "Parliment" corrected to "Parliament" (hero of our Parliament,)
+  Pg. 119 "agree" corrected to "agrees" (it agrees with me)
+  Pg. 455 "sparating" corrected to "separating" (in separating)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, by George Meredith
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL ***
+
+***** This file should be named 34858.txt or 34858.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/8/5/34858/
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Dianne Nolan, Louise Setzer and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.