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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, Volume 1, by George Meredith
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, Volume 1
+
+Author: George Meredith
+
+Release Date: December 28, 2001 [eBook #4406]
+[Most recently updated: November 7, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Pat Castevans and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL ***
+
+
+
+
+The Ordeal of Richard Feverel
+
+by George Meredith
+
+1905
+
+
+Contents
+
+ BOOK 1.
+ CHAPTER I. THE INMATES OF RAYNHAM ABBEY
+ CHAPTER II. SHOWING HOW THE FATES SELECTED THE FOURTEENTH BIRTHDAY TO TRY THE STRENGTH OF THE SYSTEM
+ CHAPTER III. THE MAGIAN CONFLICT
+ CHAPTER IV. ARSON
+ CHAPTER V. ADRIAN PLIES HIS HOOK
+ CHAPTER VI. JUVENILE STRATAGEMS
+ CHAPTER VII. DAPHNE'S BOWER
+ CHAPTER VIII. THE BITTER CUP
+ CHAPTER IX. A FINE DISTINCTION
+ CHAPTER X. RICHARD PASSES THROUGH HIS PRELIMINARY ORDEAL, AND IS THE OCCASION OF AN APHORISM
+ CHAPTER XI. IN WHICH THE LAST ACT OF THE BAKEWELL COMEDY IS CLOSED IN A LETTER
+
+
+
+
+BOOK 1.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+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; thenceforth 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
+tittle, 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 demeanor, 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 nursemaid 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 candles 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. Doris Foray 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
+
+
+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 lining laurel from
+each other's brows, line 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 Males 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 school-boy 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 neighbors, 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 has 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
+beat 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
+
+
+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 daylong-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 con-trary. 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, oh which Ripton's eyes, stuck in the edge, 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 and from the Western edge of
+the rain-cloud.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+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, remotest cousins, were glad to
+disperse and seek amusement in music and tea. Sir Austin did his utmost
+to be hospitable 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 anyone 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 market-ware, 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 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 matched
+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 today, 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 Watkins 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 house-maids and
+under-crooks, 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. Six 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 awake 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 verb 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 lifelong 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 door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+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 Pick 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 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 ordinary newspaper
+incident; only when the report particularized the garments damaged, and
+the unwonted distressing position Farmer Blaize was reduced to in his
+bed, 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 had 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 the 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 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 with 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 forever
+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
+
+
+As soon as they could escape, the boys got 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 momently 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. Lack 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 betty 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 forever 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 bye 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
+
+
+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 Feverals 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; hobnail 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
+
+
+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 m 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 ease 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
+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 gues," 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 arm-chair 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 abort 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 consternation 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
+
+
+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 ye oath on't. Hulloa! What are ye screwin' yer eye at Mr. Feverel
+for?—I say, young gentleman, have you spoke 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 says today, 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
+transport 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' 'soused you,
+sir! You're a boy and'll learn better. I asked no more than payment and
+apology; 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
+
+
+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 cheekbones. 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 blood, thirsty 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-prop. 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 gentlemen 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 faded 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
+
+
+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 tremendously 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 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 tremendously
+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 red-faced 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 tremendous 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, in 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.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL ***
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